


The Fall of Rome (Tommy Shelby)

by mangonugget



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M, Gangsters, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:27:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 36,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27484237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangonugget/pseuds/mangonugget
Summary: Samantha Taylor is a combat nurse  Or, was. At the end of the Great War, the young woman is struggling to find out where she fits in among the broken soldiers and scarred heroes; at the culmination of her search for her lost father, Samantha finds herself in Small Heath, where the Peaky Blinders reign supreme. At the head of the Blinders is a war hero named Thomas Shelby, a man who has more demons than anyone can ever keep track of. It isn't long before Tommy offers Samantha a proposition, one that sets off a chain of events that neither one of them could have ever prepared for.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Original Character(s), Tommy Shelby/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 176





	1. Chapter 1

1919

He hated funerals. He’d never admit it to anyone, especially not anyone close to him, but the mere thought of standing over a plot of freshly turned dirt was enough to send shivers down his spine. It wasn’t the idea of death that he didn’t like, knowing that there was someone down there that was never going to see the light of day again, no, it was a _funeral_ in itself that made him uncomfortable. When he knew the individual, and knew them quite well, he always assumed responsibility for their death. Even if it wasn’t his fault.

Though, this time, it was most definitely his fault.

Billy Taylor was an ailing man, sure, but he had come to Tommy after the war asking for work. It was hard for Mr. Taylor to find work, you see, for he had bouts of insanity that would cause him to lose control of just about everything. During these bouts, it would take an awful lot of convincing for Mr. Taylor to realize that he wasn’t on the frontlines, not anymore.

It was a newly coined term that Mr. Taylor suffered from, one that had not yet reached the minds and mouths of everyone in the country. There were still theories being toted about, and people disagreeing as to whether or not it was even a thing, but any soldier that came back from France would tell you that the term was very much real, and that Mr. Taylor was most certainly suffering from shell-shock.

Tommy had sent Mr. Taylor to collect betting payments the other afternoon. Billy had seemed normal that morning, though Thomas would later admit to himself that it was nearly impossible for him, or anyone for that matter, to predict when Billy would slip back onto the frontlines and relive the horrors once more. Unfortunately, when Mr. Taylor reached the bakery, he was in the midst of the trenches, flinching at every unknown noise—whether it be the giggling of children passing by or otherwise. Mr. Taylor no longer knew where he was, and no longer knew that the war was over. He had stepped into the bakery and began throwing tables and chairs, and while that alone would have certainly caused trouble for the Blinders at some point, Billy’s fate was sealed when he drew a knife on the owner.

The owner, obviously feeling threatened, responded with a bullet through Billy Taylor’s head, putting him in the ground at Tommy Shelby’s feet and making him hate funerals even more than he already did.

Beside him, his brothers John and Arthur held their hats in their hands as the priest said a few words over the fresh grave. It was a small affair, meaning that only the three brothers and the priest were in attendance. There was a feeling gnawing at the back of Tommy’s mind as he came to the realization that he didn’t know if there should have been anyone else there.

He didn’t speak to Billy about anything other than business. To Thomas, the world was all about business and he didn’t have time to dabble in the personal affairs of those who worked for him. But Billy Taylor had been a good man, a handsome man by any standard, so there was little doubt in Tommy’s mind that he had had a family. Somewhere, at some point.

So, as the vicar finished up his prayers and closed up the holy book he held in his hands, Tommy turned to his brothers, “Did Billy have any family that we should know about? So we can ensure their welfare?”

It was John who spoke, “Yeah, he had a daughter. He spoke about her quite a lot. I dunno if she’s dead or alive, but he had a daughter. By the sounds of it, they hadn’t seen each other since they both left for the lines.”

“Both?” Thomas asked, raising his eyebrow.

“She volunteered as a nurse, from what he told me.”

Thomas said nothing, merely turned from the plot and placed his cap back onto his head, the sunlight glinting off the razorblades sewn into the fabric as he did so. Without another word, Thomas Shelby walked off into the morning mist.

~*~

“A toast!” Arthur Shelby’s voice vibrated off the walls of the Garrison, his thick accent slurring underneath the guise of the alcohol coursing through his veins. “A toast to dear ol’ Billy Taylor, and the grand job he did. For his country, for the Blinders. For us.” He didn’t even wait to listen to the roar of the guests as they too raised their glasses before he tipped the mug into his mouth, what remained of his pint sliding down his throat with ease.

Thomas Shelby sat in the small, private room in the Garrison, the door still wide open so that he could observe anyone who walked in through the door. He wasn’t looking for anyone in particular. Merely looking among the many faces that trampled in through the Garrison door, many of them having no idea who Billy Taylor even was. Sure, they knew who the Peaky Blinders were, and knew that the Blinders had a hold on Small Heath, but there was definitely no way that a good majority of those who walked through the door could put a name to a face for anyone but the Shelby’s. The berets were symbol enough.

By the time she walked in through the door, the crowd gathered in the pub had forgotten the very reason they were gathering for. All that mattered to them was that tonight, as a very special and rare occasion, drinks were on the house—if the price was deemed reasonable enough to lose, that is. But she wasn’t looking for free drink, no. Tommy could tell that from the moment he caught a glimpse of her. She seemed rigid, every muscle tight and unmoving. Like she wasn’t used to this place, like she didn’t know why she was even here.

Her brunette hair was swept up into a neat nurse’s bun at the nape of her neck, and when she turned towards the private room, Tommy could see, even from a distance, her glassy eyes and her lips pressed into a tight line. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was because he was, admittedly, staring at her, or if it was because everyone else in the pub was too absorbed with the drinking, but the young woman began making her way over to the private room. With a hand on the doorframe, she leaned in, “I was told to ask for a Mr. Thomas Shelby. Shall I assume that that’s you?” Her accent cut through the roar of the crowd outside, and it took all of three seconds for Tommy to realize that she was from London. He had spent enough time around Billy to become familiar with the accent, even if Billy’s voice had long since become gravely and worn with time and smoke. But the London accent was posh and clean, with pronunciation and enunciation and all the -ations carrying through every word.

It was plain as day, this was Billy’s daughter.

“That all depends on who’s asking.” Tommy took a swig of his whiskey before putting his nearly-done cigarette in his mouth and taking a few deep inhales. The smoke curled out of his mouth and into the air before she spoke again.

“My name is Samantha. Samantha Taylor. I believe you just buried my father.” The woman timidly stepped into the private room and took a seat across from him. In the light, when he could see her up close, Tommy could see the remnants of streaks of tears, and her mascara was smudged against her cheeks. Behind his shielded heart, where the walls towered above even the highest building in the world, Tommy couldn’t feel anything but pity for the girl.

Her eyes were a pretty shade of green that sparkled at every glint of the light. Looking at her, Tommy decided that she must have gotten her looks from her mother, because even though he looked into Samantha’s eyes and saw Billy behind them, her jaw was too sharp, her cheekbones too high. No, her features were all her mother’s, surely.

“Then yes,” he murmured, motioning the bottle of Irish Whiskey next to him as way of offering her a drink. “I am Thomas Shelby. And yes, I did just bury your father.”

Samantha shook her head at the whiskey and visibly swallowed, and her already glassy eyes began to water even further, tears bubbling at the corners of her eyes and her cheeks beginning to burn red with the beginnings of a breakdown. But she kept her composure as she sniffed and once again swallowed before looking back at him. “What happened?”

“I hear you were a combat nurse. Where were you stationed?”

Another swallow, “Belgium. I was there for Passchendale.” With shaky hands, Samantha reached into her bag and pulled out her sleeve of cigarettes and her lighter, putting it into her mouth and lighting up. “From the letters my father was sending me, I’ve to assume that my father was shell-shocked. Some of them were clearly the ramblings of a man who couldn’t tell right from left, up from down. Some of them were as though he was writing to a younger me. And only in some of them did I see my father.” Samantha took another drag. “I didn’t even know Small Heath existed, if I’m being honest. When those letters started arriving, I wasn’t even sure that they were coming from him. But I asked his superior officers, the ones who returned home to our corner of London, and they said that after my father had one too many breakdowns, he lost work. Came here.” She sniffed. “I’m sorry, I’m not too sure why I’m telling you all of this.” Her voice cracked at the end, and she looked down at the table as her lip started to quiver.

“Maybe because you came here to find your father, and you somehow feel as though you have to justify that.”

The air between them became dull and silent as Samantha continued to take drags off of her cigarette, her head turned towards the window that faced outwards to the street. There were tears that Tommy could see glistening in the light, but he didn’t call attention to them. Tommy downed the rest of his whiskey, “Would you like me to take you to where we buried him?”

She shook her head, “No, no, I don’t…I don’t think I’d be able to handle that. Did he have a place here in town? I'd like to see it, if he did. I think I’ll stay for a few days and get his affairs in order before returning home.” Samantha licked her lips, pressing her cigarette into the crystal tray on the table. “Can you answer one question for me, Mr. Shelby?”

Tommy nodded, taking a drag from his own cigarette.

“Did he go peacefully?”

Once again the silence settled between the two of them, neither one of them wiling to break eye contact. He didn’t doubt that she knew what his silence meant, but then again Tommy couldn’t bring himself to outright tell her what had happened to her father. He didn’t know why. But, instead of telling her that old Billy Taylor ended up with a bullet in his head, Tommy merely poured more whiskey from the decanter into his glass, “I’ll have one of my brothers show you to your father’s house.”

~*~

It’d been a long three years.

Her father’s home—a room in a townhouse--made her so overwhelmingly sad. Peeling wallpaper that reeked of cigarette smoke that had begun to build up years before her father moved in. The floorboards creaked underneath her feet, underneath the minimal weight of the one suitcase she had brought with her. Shoved in the corner was a bed on metal framework, neatly made with military cornered sheets. There was a small cooker opposite the bed, and a small cooler beside that. A round table with a single chair sat in the center of the room, and on top of the table was a wilting sunflower. Samantha almost started crying at the sight of that flower.

In London, even in the hustle and bustle of the city, her father had managed to grow a small flowerpot’s worth of sunflowers. They were her favorite flowers, and the fact that her father had one in his small home brought her both comfort and sadness. She wasn’t sure which emotion to feel more.

Even though the room seemed to get smaller and more claustrophobic the more she looked around, she couldn’t deny the connection to her father that was ever present there. She hadn’t seen her father since before they left. She had been nineteen in 1916; her father had managed to avoid being drafted for a few years, as the shared thought was that the war would be over before Christmas. And then it became the Christmas after that. When it became clear that the war would not be over by the Christmas of 1916, the English government called for more volunteers and once again enacted the draft. Billy Taylor was drafted that time around, and as soon as the letter came, Samantha volunteered.

He had been angry at first; his only child, a girl nonetheless, was volunteering to go to the frontlines to help with the first aid efforts. But there was no talking Sam out of it, try as Mr. Taylor might, his daughter had a strong will and a mind that wouldn’t quit. So, on the twentieth of April 1916, Samantha and her father stood on the platform at London Victoria, each of them carrying one bag of belongings. He was going to France, she Belgium. They had both hoped that they would somehow end up stationed together, that someone higher up would see their enlistment paperwork and decide that they couldn’t split up a father daughter pair.

The last time Samantha saw her father was when he was nothing more than a speck aboard the train headed to Paris.

She audibly choked at the memory, just as she had choked on her tears as she boarded her own train. The only training that she had had involved minor medical details—how to stich up a wound, dig out a bullet, disinfect _everything_ —but nevertheless she was considered a member of the British Army, and had the enlistment paperwork to prove it. That didn’t mean that she felt like one, though. Sitting there in her reserved box with her bag underneath her seat and her head leaning against the window, Samantha had let herself cry. She hadn’t cared who saw her do so. She was leaving everything, and everyone, that she knew behind. Whoever wasn’t sympathetic to that wasn’t someone that Samantha was going to give the time of day.

Now, in her father’s apartment, Samantha unbuckled her heels and padded across the creaking floorboards. The bed groaned underneath her weight as she pulled back the covers and sipped under them. The waterworks were instantaneous, then. It had been so, so long since she had seen her father, had embraced him in any capacity, that she had forgotten what it felt like. Had forgotten what he smelled like. But laying there with the blankets pulled up to her chin, Samantha could smell the faint and distance smell of his cologne mixed with cigarette smoke and the small bit of warmth provided by the itchy blanket made her feel as though her father was there to hug her at last.

Sam cried herself to sleep that night, overcome with the insurmountable sadness of the realization that she would never see her father again, something she had been prepared for during the war but now seemed like a cruel twist of fate.

It’d been a long three years, and Samantha Taylor was tired.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Please be advised, this chapter mentions blood and war. Nothing too graphic, but there is depiction below.

There was so much blood. She was head to toe covered in the thick body fluid that smelled so metallic it made her woozy. And as badly as she wanted to shower, she couldn’t. Not yet. Though admittedly she had been telling herself that for what seemed like days now. The men just kept coming, the floor beneath her feet now a cesspool for all of their combined blood. It was hard to keep track of who she had already seen and who she hadn’t—though she hoped that the injured men weren’t being sent back to fight once more.

Though with the way things were going, there was no telling.

The battle had been raging for a month straight—she was learning French medical terms faster than she ever thought possible—and even though a month seemed a good chunk of time, Samantha believed wholeheartedly that she had seen too many injured soldiers. Too many dead men.

“Hold him down, Samantha!” Her supervisor barked. Madame Mimi, as she was called, was a professional nurse by trade back in her hometown somewhere in Belgium. Samantha knew that Mimi had mentioned the exact town, but as the days blurred together and the nurses began to lose sleep, Samantha really didn’t feel as though the detail was important. Due to her trade, Madame Mimi accepted nothing but the best work, even in the stressful and trying times. If the stitch wasn’t perfect, Mimi forced Samantha to redo the stitches and explain to the soldier why she was redoing them. Sam learned pretty quickly how to stitch up a bullet wound.

But this would be different, and Sam knew that as she put her whole-body weight behind her lean, pushing the full length of her forearms into the screaming soldier’s chest. Her arms were stained red with another soldier’s blood, but neither her nor the man seemed to care. The man on the table was about to lose his leg, and although he already couldn’t feel the lower half of his left leg, he was fighting against Sam’s hold. The sounds coming out of his mouth were a mixture of crying and screaming; he didn’t want to lose his leg. He kept mentioning a woman’s name, and Sam had to swallow at the thought of a woman suddenly losing love for her husband because he lost half a limb in the war.

As the Madame began to saw into the man’s leg, blood spurt out everywhere, and Sam abruptly turned her head in the other direction, towards another table. Though the view wasn’t much better—the man on top of the table was slowly dying. There was nothing the team of nurses could do to stop him from doing so. The very least they could do was ease his pain with morphine, and Samantha tried to keep it together as she watched the man’s life slowly slip away.

Then, though, there was an eruption of pain along her left forearm, the arm that was closest to the man’s face.

Sam yelped and looked down, letting out a proper scream when she realized that the man—in his desperation—had leaned forward and taken a bite out of her arm. There was a chunk of flesh missing from her left arm, and blood poured down the wound and onto the man’s neck as he leaned back and continued to thrash around. She was in pain, but one look at Madame Mimi told her that she couldn’t let go. Not yet. Not when the saw was only halfway through the man’s leg.

Her arm burned, she was crying, and all she wanted was for this day to be over.

Samantha shot up out of bed, the sheets underneath her soaked with her sweat. It wasn’t the first time that she had dreamed about those horrid months in Passchendaele. It certainly wasn’t the first time that she had dreamed about the scar on her left forearm and how she got it. Instinctively, without even looking at it, Samantha began rubbing at the wound.

In the light, it was a few shades lighter than her already pale skin. It had taken three months post-injury for it to heal, meaning that by the time her arm had fully healed, the Battle of Passchendaele was over.

When she woke up from a nightmare, it was always a toss-up as to whether or not she would manage to go back to sleep. Sometimes she fell asleep immediately. Sometimes, not at all. There was a feeling in the pit of her stomach that told her that she wouldn’t be going back to sleep this time around. And so, after another deep breath, Samantha swung her legs over the side of the bed and headed to her suitcase that was overturned with clothes spilling over. She reached in and snagged a light sweater that she wrapped tightly around herself before heading over to the window.

The window slid open with an enormous groan and the cool night air flooded into the bedroom. It made her keenly aware of the stickiness of the sweat on her skin. It brought her back to reality. It told her that she wasn’t in the fields of Belgium, covered in a never-ending supply of blood. She was home, she was in England, she was alive.

Though the same couldn’t be said for her father, Samantha hoped that he was proud of her. He hoped that, no matter what had happened to him, it was quick and swift. The look on Thomas Shelby’s face had told her that she didn’t want to know how her father died. She hoped that she would never learn, based on the knot that had formed in her gut when he didn’t say anything.

Samantha leaned against the sill, her head against the frame, as she lit a cigarette. Looking out onto the streets of Small Heath, she once again found herself feeling sad for her father. Knowing that he was spending the last few months of his life here in this industrial town was not something she would have ever wanted for him. She’d been to Birmingham before but never had she been to the Small Heath district. If nothing else, looking out and seeing the cobblestone streets coupled with the ever-present smoke coming from the factory funnels made her want to scream at the top of her lungs at the system that failed her father. He should have been receiving treatment for the sickness in his head.

Smoke curled out of her nostrils as Samantha leaned all the way forward onto her forearms. If nothing else, she could admit that the night sky here was pretty. Even with the smoke, she could see the night sky a lot better than she could in London. In London, there were too many buildings that towered until they pierced the sky. Here, everything but the factories remained even. Samantha could forgive the smoke clouds if it meant she could still see the stars sparkling. She’d name one of them after her dad.

From below, Sam heard a shout followed by the pounding of feet against the cobblestones as someone stumbled. A quick glance down told her that it was a group of men stumbling from The Garrison, clearly drunk. Earlier, when the Shelby brothers—John and Archie, was it?—had shown her to her father’s apartment, Sam found herself wondering if he had chosen this apartment because of the proximity to The Garrison. Being near it must have brought some comfort.

Samantha took another drag and watched the group of men stumble around. Something must have told them that she was watching, for one of them turned their head and looked up at her. From the second story window, with the moon gleaming in the street, Sam saw the glints of razorblades in the cap. The man, upon seeing her, took off the cap and placed it to his chest, making it very easy for her to discern that it was Thomas Shelby himself stumbling along with who she now assumed were his brothers. She raised her free hand to him, and he lifted his cap up into the air in response.

“Goodnight, Miss Taylor!” Came his gruff voice, carried upwards into the calm night.

All she could do was let out a small laugh and wave at him again, “Goodnight, Mr. Shelby.” She said softly before tapping out her cigarette against the window pane and retreating, shutting the window behind her with a click.

~*~

She hadn’t expected to fall asleep again but enthralled with the words on the pages of _Night and Day_ , Samantha apparently found herself relaxed enough to fall asleep. She awoke with the book laying open across her chest and sunlight streaming through the window. She didn’t know how long she was going to be in Small Heath—getting her father’s affairs in order could take as little as a few days—but she promised herself that if she was going to be there more than a week she would buy some damn curtains for the small apartment. The sun coming in through that window was brutal.

As she readied herself for the day—dressing in a pale blue skirt that reached just above her ankles, a white button up top and swiping on some quick makeup—Samantha came to the realization that she really did not know where to start when it came to getting her father’s affairs in order. Was there a bank in Small Heath that she could go to? Did her father even _have_ a bank account? She knew that settling affairs meant closing out any accounts and paying off any debts that her father had accrued, and by the look of his apartment she had to imagine that there wasn’t too much debt to settle at all. If nothing else, the room for sure.

After pulling her stockings on and buckling her heels onto her feet, Samantha debated whether or not going back to The Garrison and seeing if Thomas was there. From the little information she got when she arrived in Small Heath yesterday, she had gathered that her father worked for the Shelby family. Doing what, she wasn’t sure, but if she had to guess it had something to do with the razorblades sewn into Thomas’ hat and how her father died. Another topic she wasn’t willing to delve into.

If he was there, Sam hoped that he would be able to help direct her to the places she needed to go to close out accounts. Even if that meant boarding a train and heading to a different town to get to a bank.

In the early morning hours, the streets of Small Heath were already alive with workers carrying loads of coal to and from factories, people dragging produce and other food goods across the small streets by means of small carts. The smell of freshly baked bread filled the air, and Samantha tried to ignore the growling in her stomach. She could get breakfast when she knew where she was headed that day. She made a mental note to ask Mr. Shelby to point her in the direction of the bakery, too. A good cup of tea sounded heavenly right then.

Samantha paid attention to the ground in front of her as she picked her way through the cobblestone street, smiling and saying good morning to the few people she saw on her way to The Garrison. In London, pubs didn’t open until at least eleven in the morning, but she was very quickly realizing that Small Heath was very different from London. In London, unless there was work to clock into, people stayed inside until at least nine in the morning sipping tea and enjoying breakfast while they read the morning paper. Her mother called it a side effect of the war as people tried to re-establish a sense of normalcy throughout the city.

That’s all to say that she wasn’t at all surprised when she reached the pub’s entrance and tugged on the door to find it open already. Whether or not it was open for business was another matter entirely, but Samantha wasn’t looking for a drink—she rarely drank to begin with—merely wanted a question answered.

The man behind the bar didn’t even look up to greet her as he continued shining a small glass with a towel, “We’re closed. Come back in a few hours.”

“I’m not here for a drink, I’m looking for Mr. Shelby.”

The barman stopped shining the glass, then, and looked up from his task to look at her. She could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to determine who she was and what she could possibly want with Mr. Shelby. Sam couldn’t exactly say that she blamed him. The Shelby boys were a complete mystery to her, having only discovered they existed twenty-four hours prior. And yet everyone in Small Heath seemed to hold them to some high regard, and so she found herself receiving another puzzle into the mystery that was the Shelby boys.

“Which one?”

“Oh, um—Thomas.”

The barman set the glass down, “He’s not here. This is his brother’s pub, but he’s not here either. Their place of business is a few doors that way—” he motioned in a general direction behind him. “Here on Watery Lane. It’s called The Shelby Parlour, if you get lost, but considering tomorrow is a race day, you’ll see a bunch of people head in. Just follow the crowd.”

Sam nodded and readjusted her purse, “Thank you. Good morning, sir.” Samantha turned on her heels and walked right back out of the pub, finding herself once again walking down Watery Lane but this time in search of the Shelby’s place of business.

It didn’t take her very long at all to spot a door that had men practically running in and out of it, and as she got closer and the door kept opening and closing, she found that she could hear commotion from whatever was within that business. Based on the fact that the barman had mentioned horse races, she had to assume that the Shelby’s were bookkeepers, and so she headed towards the door that everyone was headed for.

Sam got a lot of weird looks when she walked in, and that was putting it lightly. From the customers who were moving just as hurriedly as the employees, to the main employee sitting at his table collecting bets. He was speechless for a few moments, as if he had never faced the situation before (it wasn’t considered polite for women to place bets), but before he could say anything to her about being in the shop in the first place she cleared her throat, “I’m looking for Thomas Shelby. Can you fetch him and tell him that Samantha Taylor is here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, oh my gosh! The amount of love y'all showed on the first chapter was absolutely amazing, I just HAD to post today! Thank you, I hope you enjoyed this one! x


	3. Chapter 3

Scudboat sat in a chair around the dining room table, one of the rare instances of any man from the betting shop being allowed into the Shelby home. He was injured, a thwack to the head by a Lee barrel of a rifle meant that his skin broke open and he had an insane headache. Kimber was due to show up today, so as much as Tommy wanted to shut down the bet shop for the day and go out and get whatever revenge he could against the Lee boys for the detriment they dealt to the business, he couldn’t. Not when things needed to seem business-as-usual. His heart was still thudding in his chest from the grenade going off in the family car, and his war-poisoned brain kept going back to the moment where Finn got out of the car. Except when he found himself thinking about it, Finn didn’t get out of the car.

He knew that the only reason Finn was alive was by the skin of his teeth. It was pure luck, and even though he wasn’t religious, Tommy prayed to Polly’s God in the hope that no one else would interfere in a trap that was meant for him. Even further, he prayed that nothing else would be planted before he had a chance to go to the Lee camp and speak terms of peace. Bringing them in on the Kimber deal was the only way out that Tommy could see but he was certainly happy to do it if it meant the members of his family were safe. At least for a little while.

Thomas watched as Polly rinsed the cloth that Scudboat had been holding to his head, handing it back to him stained but significantly less bloody. “You sure you’re all right, Scudboat?” he asked, tossing his now burnt-out cigarette into the ash tray on the table.

“Yeah, Tommy. I’m ‘right.”

The middle Shelby boy was about to open his mouth to say something else, to say that he was going to ensure that Scudboat felt paid back for his injuries, when there was a knock on the green doors that separated the betting shop from the family home. His eyes shot to Polly, who looked just as confused as he did. Everyone in the shop knew that those doors were practically off limits to anyone who wasn’t family. Scudboat was the exception today.

“Mr. Shelby?” came a voice from behind the door, followed by another knock. “There’s a Miss Taylor here to see you?”

Now all of the family’s eyes were on him. Even Scudboat’s. By now they knew that Miss Taylor was Billy’s daughter, he had made that clear to them after everyone in The Garrison had seen her leave the private room after the celebration. What she was doing here, Tommy didn’t have the faintest clue. As far as he was aware, she was to leave Small Heath in a few days’ time anyhow, so why would she stop to see him?

He glanced at Scudboat, where the blood was still trailing down the side of his face, and the thought occurred to him to have Miss Taylor come into the family parlor and take a look at the injury.

She _was_ a nurse, wasn’t she? She had medical training, at least enough to sew up some skin?

But that would mean questions, questions that would ultimately lead back to how her father died and how Tommy was ultimately responsible for his death. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for those questions. Yet he looked at Pol for a few moments, eyebrows raised in a manner to let his Aunt know what he was thinking. He was expecting some sort of extreme expression from his Aunt, one that would show either agreement or disapproval; he couldn’t read her face. It was often hard to read Aunt Polly when she didn’t have a particular bias towards any one opinion. If she was angry, or glad, it’d be easy to read for sure, but this time he hadn’t a clue.

His Aunt turned towards Scudboat, “That woman here to see Tommy is a nurse. Would you like her to take a look at your head? You’re bleeding a lot, and I’m not sure what else I’m able to do for you other than continuously handing you rags to dab with.”

Scudboat looked up at Tommy, his expression clearly asking for permission that he didn’t feel comfortable vocalizing. Thomas nodded lightly, then headed over to the green door. He opened it slightly and peeked outwards, feeling his breath catch in his throat at the sight of Miss Taylor. It was the kind of reaction that he’d never had before towards a woman. Especially not one that he had known less than twenty-four hours. But she was standing there, in his betting shop, with her hair falling down on her back and with one side tucked behind her ear. It was…just a sight. One that he couldn’t explain why it had such an effect on him.

“Miss Taylor?” Tommy asked, realizing in that instance that he must have looked odd as just a head against the background of the green door. “I know you came here to see me specifically, but now that you’re here, I have a favor to ask of you. And it involves blood.”

He could see the gears turning in her head, and she glanced down at her white shirt and then back up at Tommy. And though she looked very pretty and put together, there was no hesitation, “Sure, how can I help?”

Tommy stepped back and pulled the door open a little wider so that she could step in, and by the time that she did, Miss Taylor already had her sleeves rolled up as high as she could possibly get them—how did she do that so fast?—and she quickly discarded her bag on the ground. It was clear that she was expecting a lot more blood than what she saw on Scudboat’s face, for she visibly relaxed once the man removed the cloth from his head wound. “It’s not too bad, but I do need to stitch it…do you have anything I can do that with? And something I can sterilize the wound with?”

Polly produced a small kit wrapped tightly in a cloth, a leather strap the only thing holding it close. It had what was left of the medical grade stitch the family used, as well as several razors they used to dig out bullets whenever necessary and a needle that was thin enough for the medical twine. He observed Miss Taylor’s face as she looked at the sparse supplies, if they could even be called that, and from the small glance he caught it was the razor blades that were throwing her off.

Nevertheless, Samantha accepted the bottle of whiskey handed to her and doused the needle and thread in it. She set the equipment down to dry before pouring whiskey on a clean cloth and dabbing it against Scudboat’s face. The man visibly winced, and Tommy noticed Sam mouth that she was sorry. With the application of the alcohol against the wound, it immediately began to staunch the blood flow, and with precision he’d never seen before Sam had the needle threaded and her face mere inches from Scudboat’s temple.

If there was ever going to be a stitching competition, for any reason, Tommy was sure that Samantha would win by a landslide. She was done and tying off the stitch before he even blinked, he was sure of it. “All done,” she said, smiling brightly at Scudboat and patting him on the shoulder as she stood upright, holding her now bloody hands up and away from her pristine shirt so Polly could guide her to the sink.

Arthur slid in next to him, “Did you see ‘ow fast she just did that?”

“Like lightning, ‘ey?”

Just as soon as the family gathered in the small room to discuss both the injuries as well as what the next step was going to be with the Lee family, they were dispersing, leaving only Samantha—who was still washing her hands in the kitchen sink—and Tommy, who slung out one of the kitchen chairs and planted himself in it. “So, Miss Taylor, what is it that you’ve come to see me for?”

She angled herself towards him, and Tommy noted that her arms were covered in soap, all the way up to her elbows. Sam smiled at him, “I’ve come to ask you something, really. I realized late last night that I haven’t the slightest idea where my father banked, or what debts he had. I figured, as his employer, you would have some sort of idea as to what accounts I need to close out and whom I need to pay so that his debts will be settled.”

Samantha turned away from him again and washed off all of the soap. As she did so, Tommy realized just how little Billy wrote in those letters. He knew that she hadn’t been lying to him when she said that there were letters she received that she didn’t recognize her father in. He knew enough people who came back from France a little different, his own self being one of them. Not to mention his brothers, who always seemed on edge, as if the whole world were going to blow in the next nanosecond if they weren’t paying attention. Did that mean that he should be honest with her, too? Surely he wouldn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with the young London lady.

But then again, why did it matter to him? She had made it abundantly clear that she was going to go back to London. And it wasn’t like Tommy had ever had problem with women. Maybe it was the fact that he felt responsible for her losing her father. That’s why he wanted to make a good impression on the young lady.

“Well, Miss Taylor,” he began, sliding a cigarette across his lower lip. “I can tell you right now that the only debt your father has, at least in Small Heath, is in The Garrison. I’m fairly certain he has a tab of a few pounds left.”

She was drying her hands on the dish towel then, making her way back to the dining room table with an incredulous look on her face. “Just the pub? Are you pulling my leg, Mr. Shelby?”

He blew out a puff of smoke before standing from the chair, sliding it in, and offering his cigarette to her. She took it and put it in her own mouth, still looking at him with those curious eyes of hers, “No, Miss Taylor. I’m not pulling your leg. As a member of the Peaky Blinders, I made sure your father was well taken care of. And I pay my employees in cash. I’m not sure if your father had a bank account, but I sincerely doubt it. The bank doesn’t like people like us. Furthermore, we can settle your dad’s debts at the pub later, after lunch.”

“After lunch?”

Thomas was already shrugging on his coat as she went to retrieve her bag. “Yes, Miss Taylor, after lunch. I’m asking you to have lunch with me. And I’m also going to ask that you stop calling me Mr. Shelby.”

“Only if you stop calling me Miss Taylor, Mr. Shelby.”

~*~

His family had given him a lot of shit when the pair left the house. Arthur repeatedly said Kimber—Tommy counted ten times that he said it—but he just told them to handle it on their own. He was going to lunch.

And so, as the sun began to reach its peak, Thomas Shelby found himself in the Italian district, dining outside on a rare sunny day across from Billy Taylor’s daughter. “I hope you like Italian food,” he said, swigging a drink of his whiskey. “They’re the only district that doesn’t hate me. At least not yet.”

Sam chuckled, tapping the ash from her cigarette on the cobblestones beneath her, “Not yet, hm? Between the stitches, the razor blades, and the possibility of Italians hating you, I’m going to assume that I really, really don’t want to know what it is that you do. Outside of being a bookkeeper.”

“Who said that I was anything else, Miss Taylor?”

She blew smoke out, “ _Thomas_ —please, it’s Samantha. Or Sam. Whichever.” 

Tommy leaned back in his chair, taking a few drags off his cigarette and looking around as they waited for their food to arrive. He’d never been so out in the open before—going out to eat was an extreme rarity for the Shelby family growing up, and even though the bet shop was beginning to turn a serious profit, he still felt uncomfortable spending money on food. Especially when there was good bread and good eggs at home. He wasn’t about to make a bloody sandwich for her, though. That much was for sure.

Turning back towards her, Thomas once again felt his breath catching in his throat, and so he made a point to clear it before speaking, “So, Sam, what about you? What is it that you do? Still a nurse?”

“No, I--uh, I wish, though. During the war, they created this registry. Meant to show that people are qualified to be nurses and such. Unfortunately, I’m a year short of qualifying without school. It’s three years of service of nursing of some kind before November of this year, and unless I can somehow do a year’s worth of work in three months, I’ll have to go back to school.” She took a sip of her own drink—just a water—before biting her lip and shaking her head. “Which is a shame, because I very much enjoy nursing. It does have its drawbacks, but I love helping people.”

“I noticed the scar on your arm.”

She looked down, only to see that her arm was once again covered after rolling down her sleeves from earlier. So she laughed a little, then nodded, “A soldier bit me during an amputation.”

Tommy leaned forward and hunched his shoulders, “He _bit_ you?! What an animal.”

Samantha shrugged, giving the waiter some room as he came out with their food and placed her dish down in front of her. “I can’t say that I blame him. It was like an animal desperate to get out of a trap. I was in his way. Besides, it wasn’t the worst thing to happen during my time of service.”

He paid close attention to the darkness that shrouded her face then but chose not to speak about it. From his own time during the war, he knew that there were things that just shouldn’t be talked about. Things that sat in the depths of the mind, neatly tucked away, and rarely made an appearance. When they did, though, it was a mess.

The two of them ate their lunches in silence, offering small jokes or polite small talk throughout the course of the meal. And it was the same for the walk back to The Garrison, where Tommy introduced her to Harry as well as the barmaid, Grace. He watched as Sam shook the hands of both of them before he led her by the small of her back out of the pub and down the street, back to her father’s place of residence.

“Does this mean you’ll be departing Small Heath soon?”

Sam crossed her arms over her chest, “I’m not sure. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. For now, though, I think I’ve got a date with a book.” She visibly hesitated for a moment before leaning forward and placing her hands on Tommy’s shoulders, placing a small and soft kiss on his cheek. “Thank you. Both for lunch and for taking such great care of my father.”

As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, Thomas made his way back to the bet shop, through the muck of employees still gathering bets—there was an hour left to place the bets—and right to Arthur’s office where he closed the door behind him. “Arthur, I need you to look into nursing licenses for me.”

“What for?”

“I’m going to see about getting Miss Taylor her nursing registration.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you so much for all of your encouragement! I really struggled on deciding whether or not I was going to follow the plot of the series or branch off, and I've decided I'm going to kind of run parallel to it. I hope that made sense, lol. Anyway, I hope y'all enjoyed this one and I hope you're enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it (seriously, I have never wanted to write anything more in my entire life).


	4. Chapter 4

“What are your plans for the future, hm?” He asked, popping a piece of her mother’s homemade spiced sponge cake into his mouth. There was a sly grin on his face as he did so. He very well knew what her plans for the future were—he was part of them, after all.

Sam wiped at her face with the back of her hand, flour spreading across her cheek as she did so. She had been helping her mother make Christmas cookies for their church all morning, and her arms were aching from rolling out countless piles of dough so that the cutters could be pressed into them. William had come round at midday, invited over for tea by her mother. As it turned out, they were doing a lot of the tea drinking while she was doing a lot of the baking.

Though Samantha didn’t really mind; she liked seeing them get along.

With a grin pointed in his direction, Sam spoke, “You very well know what my plans for the future are, mister. They all include you.”

William’s face, though still holding a grin, softened as he looked at her, “You know I’m still not too sure how I found you.”

“I’m not too sure how I found you, either.”

This time, when she woke, she wasn’t covered in sweat like she would be if she had just had a nightmare. Her cheeks, though, felt tight dry, and the way her eyes burned told her that she had been crying. She wasn’t sure why she had dreamed about him last night—it’d been a long time since she’d thought of them. For that she felt guilty, but she had to tell herself that it was what he would have wanted. Especially since it was nearly four years since.

William had been the first one to write after her entrance into society as a debutante at sixteen. It was a whirlwind romance, and they were engaged by the time Samantha turned seventeen in June of 1913. She was filled with so much excitement and hope for what her life would become in a few short years. Samantha couldn’t wait to be a mother, couldn’t wait to be Mrs. Lincoln.

But then war broke out and William signed up to go. The first Christmas passed without incident, though it was hard, and Samantha held a collection of letters sent to her from her fiancé while he was enlisted.

Unfortunately, William wouldn’t live to see the Christmas of 1915.

She’d be lying if she said that his death didn’t have any influence on her decision to volunteer as a nurse.

As she dunked herself underneath the cold bathwater, Sam began to wonder if she had that dream, if she was feeling guilty, because of how nice she felt when she closed the door behind her after Tommy escorted her home. But spending time with Tommy was the most normal she’d felt in a long time. And she had an inkling that it would be the most normal she would feel for a while longer. The imposing task of returning home to London and telling her mother of her father’s fate was looming in the distance. Even though her mother, deep down, knew that Billy wasn’t doing well and that it was likely that something had happened to him—that was the reason Mrs. Taylor had sent her daughter in the first place, for when the letters stopped coming, she feared the worst—the thought of telling her mother that the love of her life was dead sent chills down her spine.

She wondered if her mother’s howls would be as loud as hers were when she found out that William was dead.

Now, with her father’s debts presumably in order (she’d pay Mr. Shelby one last visit to ensure that things were indeed so before she booked a ticket home), the task seemed to be stressing her out even more.

She had told Tommy that she would see what tomorrow brought. It was tomorrow, and there was nothing more that she could do in Small Heath besides visit her father’s grave. As much as she hated to admit it, that was indeed something that she should do. Sam had come all this way in search of her father, or what had happened to him in the worst case, and it seemed wrong to leave without seeing his final resting place.

Sam was just grateful that she hadn’t been there for the funeral. She hated funerals. She hated looking at the ground and knowing that a loved one was beneath it even more, though.

And yet as she dressed herself, she was already decided on seeing him before she went. Saying a few words over him. Maybe she’d tell him a story or two from her time in service. He’d like to hear that, she was sure. Even though Billy Taylor didn’t want his only daughter, his only child, to go off to service, she knew that he would be proud of her. Her father had been a literature professor at Oxford. During the fall and spring semesters, Billy would alternate between staying in Oxford for the week and coming home on the weekends and driving to and from work on the days that he taught (which was more often than not every day). During the summer, he would bring Samantha with him and they would stay for the entire month of July, the duration of summer classes, and Sam would sit at his desk during lectures. He had always provided coloring pages or books that were more suitable for kids her age, but Sam always paid attention to her father during his lectures.

She had a great deal of respect for him and she soon developed a great deal of respect for the English literature he taught. Though Chaucer wasn’t particularly her favorite, Sam was gripped by the Shelleys and Byron and by the time she was fifteen, carried a worn copy of Frankenstein that had been rebound countless times.

If she was a literature professor herself, she would have surely found some irony in the fact that her favorite novel had somehow morphed its way into her personal life. Her father had become the monster and the British government had become Dr. Frankenstein—ashamed of the person they had created. Ashamed of what the war had done to one of their own and refusing to help him in the ways that he needed.

There was definitely animosity towards Parliament. Samantha had done research into what was in place for soldiers returning home from the war and seeing as shellshock was not yet a universally recognized term, there wasn’t much. Her father didn’t deserve to lose his job because he didn’t know how to deal with the noises in his head. Her father didn’t deserve to not have help when he needed it just because he hadn’t been an officer. It disgusted her.

Dressed in her dark green polka-dot dress with puffy sleeves and a scalloped hem, Sam buckled her Oxford heels and grabbed her bag as well as her purse. She had to see Tommy about ensuring that everything truly was closed out, so she was planning to ask him to take her to her father’s grave as well. Maybe, if he was feeling generous, he’d escort her to the train station too.

The streets, just as they had been the morning before, were already alive with people as they made their way to their places of employment. Once again, Sam caught the scent of freshly baked bread and her stomach began rumbling. She never did get that cup of tea yesterday.

When she reached the betting shop—not a far walk from her father’s place at all—she walked inside and made her way to the man sitting at the table at the entrance. He spoke without looking up at her, “We’re not open for betting yet, come back in an hour, ‘ey?”

Sam recognized the man as the one she had stitched up yesterday, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel an overwhelming sense of pride surge within her upon seeing him. He looked fine and the stitches—clearly visible—were holding up perfectly. If only Madame Mimi could see her now. All those times she had to restitch a wound with a glaring soldier at her really paid off. Choosing to ignore his comment about not being open, Sam approached the table and smiled, “I’m happy to see your stitches are holding up. How are you feeling?”

It was then that he looked up, and upon seeing her, smiled back. “I’m feeling well. Thank you. Miss Taylor, right? Billy’s daughter?”

Sam’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second before recovering, and she nodded in the man’s direction.

“I’m sorry—the Shelby family isn’t in right now. They’re attending a wedding. No idea when they’ll be back.”

Sam blinked for a few minutes, not realizing why the idea that Tommy being busy hadn’t crossed her mind that morning. Maybe it was because he had obviously cleared his schedule yesterday to have lunch with her, but it certainly threw a wrench in her plans. She didn’t feel like asking if this man knew where her father was buried; even if he did, she certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable having him accompany her to a place where she would surely cry. “Oh, a wedding. How fun. Would you mind giving him this for me, then? Please?” Samantha reached into her purse and dug out a pen and a piece of paper (thanking her mom as she did so. Her mother always swore by having a ledger of some kind on a lady’s person) before scribbling down a quick goodbye note, accompanied by an expression of her utmost gratitude and her address in London should he ever choose to write. Or call. Her cheeks warmed at the thought of Thomas Shelby calling upon her home. She folded the letter and signed Thomas’ name in delicate script before handing it over to the man, “Thank you. And see a physician within a month about getting those stitches out.”

“Miss Taylor? You’re not staying?”

“No, unfortunately not. I’ve to return home. Give Thomas my best, will you?”

At the man’s nod, Samantha turned and exited the shop, made her way down Watery Lane and onto the main streets of Small Heath before waving down a taxi. She got in, closed the door, and asked the driver to take her to Birmingham station.

~*~

Even though she had only been away for a few days, pulling into London Victoria station made her feel as though she had been gone for eons. She remembered the day her train had pulled in after returning home from the war, she had felt as though she’d never left the battle fields. Bombs had rained down upon the British capital, leveling buildings and killing an estimated 1,300 people. Her mother had been on the platform to greet her, and Sam had begun to sob the moment her mom’s arms were around her. While her husband and daughter were away, Sam’s mother held down the fort. Quite literally.

When her mother had brought her home, it was obvious she was still nervous about the possibility of bombs raining down on the city. There had been tape on the window panes that were beginning to collect dust around the edges. Her mother, Jane, had told her that she had missed her father by a few months. Those were the words that would forever haunt her, Sam realized, as she, in the second time in a few months’ time, stepped out onto the platform.

The moment she had stepped foot in her childhood home one returning from war, her mother handed her a stack of envelopes that she had tied together with twine. They were all addressed to her, and they were all from her father. When asked what happened, Jane’s lip had started quivering and she couldn’t keep the waterworks at bay as she talked about how Sam’s father had had too many mental breakdowns at work. Lost his job. He’d come home and drank heavily, and he was gone in the morning. At first, Jane said, she had been extremely worried and had gone to the police multiple times. They always brushed her off, saying that Billy was a soldier that would return home eventually. When Jane had started receiving letters, it was a sigh of relief for her. As long as she knew that Billy was safe, she could accept that he needed to get out of the city that looked as though war had never left—with buildings still crumbling and burnt support beams turning to ash in random fires—it was too much for Billy to handle, he had written to Jane in a letter. So she understood. Or tried to.

That was how Samantha and her mother communicated with her father in the months after his departure to Small Heath in January of 1919. The last letter arrived on June twenty-sixth, and Jane had begged her daughter to go and find Billy in Small Heath.

As Samantha weaved around the crowds of people gathering on the platform, greeting loved ones who were just getting home from the warfront, she had to swallow the words that she was dreading to say. She’d found her father alright, but he was in no condition to return home.

The cab ride to the Taylor townhouse was quiet, neither she nor the cabbie speaking a word as they puffed on cigarettes and stared at the passing streets. There were some buildings that were mostly intact save for one townhouse in the middle, or a corner bakery, or in one neighborhood a school was turned to ash. When she had been in Belgium, it was easy to distance herself from the reality that Belgium was people’s home. People lived and went to school and worked in Belgium. All she saw the country as was a battlefield, and she always struggled to remember that war didn’t pick barren wastelands to play out on. As they passed the houses in the city she grew up in, she couldn’t imagine what those in Belgium were feeling as their homes were destroyed and battles raged in their backyards. London was relatively unharmed compared to other places and yet her heart ached at every new scorched building that she saw.

The cabbie stopped opposite the Taylor family townhouse, and the driver left the meter running as he stepped out of the car and opened the trunk to retrieve Samantha’s bags. The family home was a modest brick townhouse with a dark grey door—matching every other townhouse on their street—but whenever Samantha laid eyes on the house, all she could think about was the plethora of memories that she created in that house. In this neighborhood. Those memories seem to be dulled by the fact that nearly every house on the street had someone go to war. And now she was adding to the casualty list.

Paying the driver the required faire, she thanked him and took her bag from him before quickly crossing the street and swinging open the front gate. Her mother was already opening the door and stepping out onto the small front porch before Samantha had managed to close the gate behind her. By the look on Jane Taylor’s face, Sam knew that there were a million questions running through her mother’s head. Questions that she was clearly afraid to know the answer to. Samantha was praying to whomever was listening that she wouldn’t have to say the words, that her mother would just be able to tell from looking at her.

Being in the same town that her father had died in had almost felt like a dream, she realized, and now that she was home and about to step into her childhood home without him on his arm, it seemed as though she had to face a harsh reality that even she wasn’t ready for. Yet as her mother embraced her and began to lead her up the pathway to the front door, Sam spoke quietly, delivering the harsh truth that both of them needed to grieve.

Samantha and her mother convened in the parlor, both of them holding cups of tea as tears streamed down their faces. Jane’s hair had been graying since the day Samantha and her father left for war, and now that Sam had brought home devastating news, it was like her mother’s hair had gone stark white. Like the stress of it all had finally caught up to her. One of the first things her mother had done upon entering the house, instead of wailing like Sam expected her to (which only showed her how much of a strong woman her mother truly was), was to light a fire and put the kettle on. Then, she asked Samantha to meet her in the parlor with the tea once it was ready before disappearing upstairs. When they met once more, Sam had the tea and Jane had a photo album and a box full of letters from Billy.

And so, the two of them sat, looking at old horrific-quality photographs taken by her father when the camera became available to consumers in 1900. He took photos of three-year-old Samantha toddling around, and Jane pointed out one that Billy had stuck in the album that clearly captured his thumb in the corner.

When they got to the letters, Samantha could only laugh at the number of times her father had written to her mother complaining about the fact that Sam had decided to sign up for the nursing volunteer program. But there were also an overwhelming number of letters that said how proud he was of her, and those brought tears to her eyes and thick lumps in her throat.

“He really was proud of you, you know.” Jane murmured quietly, rubbing Sam’s head as Sam leaned against her mother’s folded legs from her position on the floor.

Sam’s lip quivered as she looked fondly at the album in front of her, the page turned to a photo taken by her mother on the day that she and her dad had left for war. They were both in their uniforms, and Billy’s smile was reaching ear to ear. He was clearly proud. “I was proud of him too. Still am.”

That night, after her mother had gone to bed and the whole of London was quiet, Samantha got out a pen and paper and began to write, her heart filled with ache.

_Dear Mr. Thomas Shelby…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi y'all! I hope everyone is doing well! Thanks again for all of the amazing feedback and all of the kudos. I really can't express how much they mean to me! 
> 
> I've decided I'm going to have a posting schedule of Tuesday/Friday, so it gives me time to draft, edit and hopefully catch any mistakes before I post! 
> 
> Hope everyone is staying safe and well! Please let me know what you thought of this one! Seeing a little more into Sam as a character(: I hope you like her as much as I do!
> 
> ps...I know it's a slow burn. Things are going to start happening soon. Promise!


	5. Chapter 5

To say that Sam left at an inopportune time would have been a bit of an understatement, really. When Ada’s water broke at John’s wedding, the first-person Tommy thought of bringing her to was Samantha. Even though she was a combat nurse, she would surely be able to aid in the delivering of a baby, right?

He didn’t have the chance to ask her, however, for when the family returned to Watery Lane and Ada was led into the family home, wailing as another contraction started, Thomas was handed a note by Scudboat who then promptly left. The note didn’t say much, but it said enough for Thomas to get the gist that Samantha was on her way home—perhaps already there—to London. He couldn’t explain the weird ache that formed in his chest then. It wasn’t as though there was a deep sentiment that he had for the girl—he’d only known her for a few days—but perhaps the ache was forming because of the unknown. Because Tommy didn’t really get the chance to know her like he wanted to.

But there was an address, neatly scribbled at the bottom of the page, and as Thomas folded up the note and placed it in an inside coat-pocket, he made the decision that he would go to see her. Eventually. One day. When that one day would be was up in the air and dependent on how things were going to go with Kimber.

As himself and his brothers made his way to the Garrison in order to give the women room to safely deliver the baby, Thomas found himself thinking about how he did indeed have confirmed betting set up at the next races. There was an overwhelming sense of pride that he felt for that fact. He wanted, and was trying, so very hard to raise his rank within society. Becoming a legal betting practice was just one of the steps that he was willing to take in order to do so. The race was in a few weeks’ time, and yet it still felt as though it was eons away. There was nothing he needed to prepare—he decided that he would be one of the ones attending the race that day—but there was still this sense of anxiety sitting in his gut at the thought.

Was it out of excitement? He honestly couldn’t tell.

Before the war, Thomas Shelby didn’t get anxious. He didn’t worry about trivial things and the like. He worried about where the next dinner would come from, he worried about his siblings. Then the war came, and he was suddenly worried about whether or not he was going to die, whether or not his siblings were going to die. Whether the tunnel was going to collapse again and again until he was nothing but pieces in the middle of the earth. Now that he was home, he could feel that he was more on edge than he’d ever been. Not that he’d ever admit that to someone.

Not that he’d ever admit that he was on edge about a horse race, of all things.

But he supposed there was a good reason for him to be worried about these races. The Worcester races were going to be the place where Thomas would put his Black Star Day plan into motion. Taking down Kimber and taking over his enterprise had always been part of Tommy’s grand scheme, and though he wouldn’t admit it there were certainly times where he felt as though he was biting off more than he could chew, he definitely felt that way when he looked at his calendar and saw the looming black pen mark scribbled into the date.

The next few days passed in a blur, all of them feeling the exact same as the last. He moved slow, feeling heavy and weighted with the news that his brother-in-law was arrested and that his sister felt as though Tommy was responsible. Heavy with the knowledge that there was an Inspector breathing down his back about guns that he didn’t plan on giving up until the bargain with Kimber was done. He knew, deep down, that it was just the universe testing him. Putting so much pressure down unto him to see if it was indeed something that he could handle—the taking over Kimber business. He was about to enter into a world with which he was entirely unfamiliar, and Thomas knew that it wouldn’t be as cut and dry as he and everyone around him hoped.

And then, oh then…

The letter arrived on his desk on a bright Saturday afternoon. He was stressing, going through at least six cigarettes in the span of two hours, but seeing the letter on his desk made him feel a little sense of calm. He knew the handwriting the moment that he saw it, and he couldn’t help the smile that crossed over his face at the delicate cursive that graced the envelope’s face.

_Dear Mr. Thomas Shelby,_

_I apologize for my sudden departure, but with the settling of my father’s affairs I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. My father’s landlady, she told me to call her Doreen, said that you had been paying for the rent for as long as my father had been working for you. I didn’t want to inconvenience you by staying any longer, but nevertheless I need you to know and need to once again express my gratitude. The kindness you showed me in a mere few days’ time is a true test of character, and I’m very pleased to have met you. I’m very pleased to know that my father met you. It is comforting to know that his last few months were spent in a town where he at least felt welcome. If there is ever a way that I can repay you, please do not hesitate to inform me of such._

_I’d also like to extend an invitation to a dinner my mother is holding in two weeks’ time, on August the fifth, as a celebration of life for my father (she says having two funerals is very inappropriate). It’d mean a great deal if you were there. I understand that the Worcester races are to take place on August the tenth, so if you will be busy with preparations for the races I will understand._

_I look forward to receiving your reply._

_Ever so sincerely,_

_Samantha R. Taylor_

He glanced at the diary on his desk, looking at how the July days faded into August, realizing how close that made it all seem. August tenth was indeed the start of the Worcester races, Samantha was right about that, but it was also that day that was marked as the start of Thomas’ Shelby most ambitious move yet. Having that monumental event be so close to the dinner that Samantha was asking him to attend was nerve wracking, for sure—he should spend that time planning and going over logistics with the boys—and yet he couldn’t help the small grin on his lips at the thought of seeing Samantha again. Realistically, he didn’t even know that he was smiling, and probably would have smiled even wider had he not been at work.

So Thomas Shelby wrote back and accepted the invitation to the dinner that was being given in celebration of the man that he didn’t know all that well. Even though he didn’t know Billy that well, Sam was certainly grateful that Tommy had helped him in any way that he could, so in a way Tommy was going for her (and out of respect for Billy, but mainly for Sam).

After sending out the acceptance letter, Tommy didn’t feel as though time was feeling so heavy. Having something to look forward to that was meant to be a relaxing event definitely put him at ease, and he found that it made planning the stressful part of that week much easier, too. Thomas ordered business cards for himself and his brothers, marketing themselves as members of Shelby Brothers Limited. The cards arrived swiftly and he passed them out to the family accordingly.

As the days continued to pass, his brothers made comments about how he no longer looked at Grace like he had when he first met the barmaid. John especially noticed how Tommy no longer looked at the blonde Irish woman like she had walked out of a dream. Apparently, Thomas didn’t even look at her. Which made things very awkward for the pair of them when Grace tried to seduce Tommy, and he had to shake his head and walk out of his apartment.

Ask anyone but Tommy and they would tell you that the reason he was being so smiley was on account of that stack of letters he kept on his nightstand. No one was supposed to know that they were there, but everyone knew that Thomas had kept in contact with the Taylor girl, and that the two of them wrote letters to each other like they were at war and they didn’t know if they were ever going to see each other again.

Ask Tommy and he would say that he was so happy because the family’s luck was beginning to change. But even he had to admit that looking at those letters, that receiving one in the mail no less, made his heart swell. Especially when he received more than one in a week.

Samantha’s nursing registration arrived in the mail on August second, and even though he so badly wanted to open the letter and read all of its contents, he knew that Samantha should be the one to see the words for herself. He knew what the letter entailed, though. After lunch with Sam, he had gone back and had Arthur look up what went into getting a name on the nurse’s registration list. He’d learned that Sam was right—of course she was, after all that was her profession—she did need three total years of experience to qualify being put on the newly developed registry. She only had two in the war. And some change, but that didn’t count by registry standards. And so Thomas drafted up forged documents that stated that Samantha had been working for the Shelbys’, both before she left and since she’d been back. Altogether, that created the remaining year that she needed to qualify without needing to go back to school.

Even though the pair of them were corresponding through letters and even though he felt as though he was beginning to know her more than he knew himself, he couldn’t be certain that she would be gracious of his efforts. Would she be upset that he’d cheated the system to get the position that she so desperately desired? Possibly. Samantha, even though it was clear that she had an inkling that what Tommy and his family did was not entirely legal, did not know the extent to the illegality that was going on day-in and day-out of the family business. And for that reason, he was in the dark about how she’d react.

Nevertheless, it went into the small bag that Tommy would bring with him on the off chance that he got to stay overnight.

On August fifth he found himself outside of Samantha Taylor’s family home, dressed in the finest clothes he had available—darker versions of the outfits he normally wore, but with a newly polished watch chain dangling across his waistcoat—and he felt his heart pound against his chest. It’d only been two weeks. Two measly weeks. And yet he would be lying if he said he wasn’t beginning to realize that he was absolutely smitten with the young girl. There was something about her, something about the way she conducted herself and the confidence she oozed through every conversation that just made Tommy feel at ease. It was something he wasn’t used to.

Samantha was giving him a run for his money, and he didn’t know how to react to it.

Yet he knocked, hearing the inner workings of a dinner party as people laughed on the other side of the door. There was a part of him that was hoping it was someone else, literally anyone else, who opened the door to let him inside. But the door opened and standing behind it was Samantha Taylor dressed in a navy blue gown with lace shoulder-capped sleeves and her dark, long hair curled in thick ringlets that fell around her shoulders. Her green eyes were accented by minimal makeup, and yet they shone in the light.

It’d only been two weeks, but the way his breath was taken away made him feel as though he hadn’t seen a woman before in his entire life.

“Tommy,” she smiled, using the name that took at least three letters to convince her to use. “I’m glad you could make it. Come inside, let me introduce you to everyone.”

Samantha held her hand out, looped her arm around a still stunned Tommy’s, led him into the house and shut the door behind the two of them. The house was nothing like Tommy was used to, with a parlor off to the left, a staircase in the middle of a foyer, and other rooms in the back of the house that Sam was not leading him towards. Off to the right, where he was being led, he could smell a variety of different dishes. He didn’t realize how hungry he was until he smelled the mouthwatering food in the other room. And the hunger took his mind off the fact that he was here to honor the life of a man he didn’t know all that well.

But when they rounded the corner, all eyes were on them as Samantha began to interrupt all of the conversations in the room, “I’d like to introduce you all to Mr. Thomas Shelby, my father’s boss these last few months.”

Tommy could feel his heart stop dead in his chest as he locked eyes with the man sitting at the far end of the dinner table, at the seat to the left of the head.

Billy Kimber was swirling around a small glass of whiskey, emotionless, as he returned the dead stare that Tommy was giving him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I know this one was real short, I'm sorry! It needed to be otherwise there was going to be another nine chapters of exposition lol. Anyway, I hope you liked it!


	6. Chapter 6

He was dreaming, wasn’t he? Tommy was having a very difficult time coming to grips with the fact that Billy Kimber himself was sitting at the Taylor’s dining room table, surrounded by others he could only assume were colleagues of Billy’s or who knew him in some way. Bile rose in the back of his throat, and he began to fear that Kimber could see through him. Thomas Shelby didn’t scare easy—in fact there were very few things in life that scared him—but the fact that the man who he was mere days away from usurping most definitely made him restless. He felt as though he had developed a tattoo right on his forehead that detailed exactly what his plans were.

His doctor—the one he rarely saw—told him that he had a bit of an anxiety disorder. Whatever that meant. It only hit him in quiet moments, when he least expected something to come out of the blue. His doctor told him that that was normal, especially in the type of anxiety disorder that Tommy had. He couldn’t remember the name, never bothered to, but as he lost feeling in his limbs and his head grew woozy all he could hear was his doctor saying his anxiety disorder in a whining tone until it rose, rose, rose—until it turned into a high-pitch ringing in his ears.

Tommy didn’t know how long he’d been motionless, how long he’d been watching the whiskey in Kimber’s glass swirl round and round before a dainty, greying woman walked up to him and Samantha and held out a hand for Tommy to shake. It couldn’t have been that long, though, for as his senses began to return to him and he could wiggle his toes in his shoes, no one was staring strangely—like they would had he been standing quietly.

Sucking in a breath, Tommy put a smile on his face and shook the woman’s hand with his free one, the other one still held against his abdomen so that Samantha could hold onto his arm, “Thomas Shelby,” he spoke, glancing at Samantha before looking back at the woman and feeling his smile relax into a natural one.

“I know who you are,” the woman greeted, not letting go of his hand and instead clasping it in between hers, giving the top of his hand a soft pat as she did so. “My name is Jane, Samantha’s mother and Billy’s wi—” Jane swallowed visibly. Tommy couldn’t tell if she was about to say wife or widow, but either way it was clear that it was a word that she couldn’t bring herself to finish. At least not yet.

Tommy, too, swallowed, though he helped that it wasn’t as noticeable as Jane’s sorrow. He still carried a whole lot of guilt for what happened to Billy. He hadn’t told Samantha, so there was no way that Jane could have known what happened, but that didn’t erase the guilt. Especially when Billy hadn’t seen his daughter in so long, a fact that Samantha revealed in one of the letters he had received from her. It had only made him feel more guilty, for even though Billy had made his way to Small Heath on his own fruition and had made the decisions that he made when he was in the right state of mind, Tommy knew the moment he met Billy that he was ill in the head. And he knew that if he had a family like Billy did, never seeing them again for fear of what was going on inside of his head would only tear him up more.

So all Tommy could do was purse his lips and give Jane’s hand a small squeeze, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Taylor.”

Once again Jane patted Tommy’s hand, “You can call me Jane, dear. Thank you for everything you’ve done for this family in such a short period of time.” She shared a glance with her daughter that made Sam’s cheeks flush red before departing to mingle with her other guests.

Tommy was keenly aware of Kimber’s eyes burning a hole in his skin.

“Come, let’s take our seats. Dinner’s all set; we were just waiting for you.” Sam smiled at him, and for what seemed like the millionth time that night Tommy lost his breath. She truly was dazzling, He hadn’t the slightest idea how to paint, but Tommy knew, as he looked at Sam’s gleaming emerald eyes and thick brown hair that tumbled across her shoulders, that even an experienced painter would struggle to capture just how magical this woman was.

He nodded, his smile soft and genuine, as he followed Sam’s lead down the table.

When they got to the other end, with Jane sitting at the head, Kimber to her right, Sam to her left, and Tommy to Sam’s left, Tommy pulled out Samantha’s chair for her before settling into his own seat. Once the pair were settled in their seats, Jane was quick to tap a butter knife against her wine glass, filled only slightly with some kind of white wine, and raise the glass, “Thank you all for joining us here this evening. As you all know, it had not been easy for Billy after the war. The university was struggling and couldn’t hire him back, and things were…difficult. But each and every one of you meant something to Billy in some capacity, and you were there for him at some point in his life. Some of you even saw our little piglet here,” she smiled at Sam, her eyes gleaming with tears. “Toddle down the halls of Oxford. So having all of you here tonight means a great deal to the both of us. We truly appreciate your friendship in these difficult times.” Jane was sniveling now, her voice clearly choking on tears and her lower lip quivering. Tommy, even though he didn’t like looking at a woman while she cried, figured looking at her was better than locking eyes with the man who was still staring him down from across the table. “I only wish that he had been here to see our baby girl come home.” Tommy’s ears pricked at the sound of Sam sniffling beside him, and with the hand that was not holding up a wine glass in the air, he rested a soft (and hopefully comforting) hand against Sam’s thigh underneath the table.

His knees almost hit the table in surprise as she grabbed hold of it and squeezed.

“To William Edward Taylor. We love and miss you so.” Jane finished, hoisting her glass into the air even higher for a brief moment before bringing it to her lips and taking a sip.

Everyone around the table followed suit, and it was only then that Tommy allowed himself to look at Kimber, who had not stopped boring holes in Tommy’s face since he walked into the room.

He couldn’t read the other man’s face. He was usually pretty good at picking out emotion and figuring out what other people had going on in their heads—it was kind of a must for the line of work he was in, always needing to be ready for anything at a moment’s notice—and Kimber was usually no exception to that. But tonight, Tommy genuinely couldn’t get a read on him.

Thomas was thankful that he didn’t have to break the awkward silence that had developed between the two of them while the rest of the table joined in on conversations with each other, for Samantha—with her hand still clasped around his, he may joyfully point out—cleared her throat before taking a sip of her wine, “It doesn’t take an Oxford man to see that the two of you clearly know each other.”

Sam peered at the both of them over the edge of her glass. Jane, then, seemed interested in the conversation too, for she raised her eyebrows as she cut up the chicken on her plate. “Do you two know each other?”

Kimber beat him to it, “We’re business associates.” He drawled in that accent of his that made Tommy’s skin crawl. He had to fight himself to keep the snarl off his face. “Tommy’s men offer protection for my bookies.”

“Your men?” Jane asked, looking at Tommy now.

He felt Sam’s hand tighten slightly around his own. Tommy had to reassure himself over and over again that Sam didn’t know the extent of what he did—though with how fast his heart pounded when she laid her hand on top of his, she would need to—but she knew enough to know that that was a dangerous question. He would have to pick his words carefully so that there would be no suspicion that what he did was highly illegal. That what Billy was involved in was highly illegal.

It wasn’t just his reputation at stake here, it was a grieving widow’s perception of her husband’s last months.

Tommy cleared his throat and smiled, “He means my family. I have quite the extensive family. There’s three of us Shelby boys old enough to fight, then there are my in-laws. Between the lot, there are at least twenty of us able bodied men who can put up a good fight should any of the bookies need it come race day.”

Jane seemed happy with that answer, for she smiled and nodded before taking some green beans into her mouth. Tommy could see Billy’s snarl out of the corner of his eye; it was clear that he was trying to trip Tommy up in some way.

It was Samantha who spoke next, looking at Tommy with the brightest smile he ever did see. It warmed his heart, the same one he had thought stopped beating long before, stopped beating for anything but horses and money and family. Yet here he was, practically drooling in his plate over a combat nurse who already had him in the palm of her hands (oh God…was his palm getting sweaty against her leg?!), “Billy knows my father through Oxford. Billy was a literature major for a year or so and was one of my father’s mentees.”

Tommy had to disguise his laughter as a cough, and he was quick to cover it up with a drink of water. He couldn’t picture Billy Kimber as a college educated man—he was smart, no doubt, and though he considered himself sophisticated Tommy felt as though he lacked the Oxford-man quality—and he certainly couldn’t picture Kimber as a literature major. He couldn’t wait to tell the boys.

“’eah, and I was almost a son-in-law, too,” Tommy really could feel the stare now. He felt a strange wave of relief wash over him as he realized that Kimber hadn’t been staring him down because he had somehow found out about the Shelby boys’ plan, no, he had been staring him down because Tommy had walked into the room on Samantha’s arm. “But this one was already engaged by the time I met her.”

The smirk, though brief, was easily picked up by Tommy, and Kimber’s thousand-yard glare turned into an expression of “gotcha”. Thomas had to fight the urge to look at Samantha’s hand, the one that was clasped around his. He didn’t _feel_ a ring, but had he missed it? Had he, someone who took extreme pride in being observant, missed something as vital and obvious as an engagement ring? Surely not.

Samantha’s grip got even tighter at Kimber’s words, so Tommy elected to just smile, compliment Jane on the food, and tell himself he would ask her later. After dinner. When he no longer had to look at Billy Kimber’s ugly mug.

~*~

Jane had been gracious enough to offer Tommy the guest bedroom for the night—something he’d honestly been hoping for—and he found himself in the small downstairs bedroom that overlooked the back garden. He could hear the crickets outside as he undressed, his dinner coat thrown carelessly over the bed and his holster shrugged off and on top of the jacket. He’d keep the gun close enough in case he needed it tonight, but he was in good spirits. A little drunk, too. So he didn’t have the creeping feeling that something was going to happen. For the first night in a while, Thomas Shelby didn’t feel on edge.

He was just beginning to take the nurse’s registration letter out of his pocket when there was a soft knock at the door. He slid the letter back into the pocket then took no further time in making his way over to it and pulling it open to reveal a dressed-down Samantha, makeup free and wearing a thin robe over her nightgown. It took an enormous amount of willpower for Tommy to keep his eyes on hers, for it was awfully chilly that night and he had had wandering thoughts about her before—as much as he hated to admit it.

She held up her cigarette case, waving it a little before frowning, “Join me? Please? I could really use one and I now have someone in this house who is willing to smoke with me.”

Tommy nodded, following Samantha out the door and down the hall into the kitchen, where the backdoor opened out into the back garden.

The night air was crisp and, quite frankly, a little chilly. Samantha wrapped her arms around her tight, holding out her case to him as way of offering him first pick. He smiled at her, flicked open the case, and picked one up before dragging it along his lips and fitting it into the corner of his mouth like he always did. He then picked another one up before closing the case shut, handing this one to Samantha. She took it with a small “thank you” and kept her arms wrapped tightly around her as Tommy cupped his hand around his lighter to light the cigarette first for her and then for himself.

They both pushed the smoke out of their mouths, the small wisps ruining the otherwise clear night.

It was silent between the two of them, and honestly, he was fine with it. London was a city known for its loud noises and bustling town centers. But it wasn’t anything like the long, uncomfortable silences that he experienced back home. When all the machines turned off for the night, Tommy sometimes felt like he was drowning in the silence. At least here, there was always something to listen to.

But then, Samantha’s soft voice broke that silence, “His name was William.”

“Your father?”

He caught a stupid smile on her face as she shook her head, “No. I mean yes, my father’s name was William, but everyone called him Billy. So it didn’t matter that I was engaged to a man named William.”

Tommy suddenly felt uncomfortable, and he slid his hand into his pant pocket and took another drag off his cigarette.

Sam continued, “I was sixteen when we started dating. Seventeen when we were engaged. I was a child, Tommy.” She took a drag off her own cigarette, letting the smoke curl into her nostrils. He noticed that she wasn’t looking at him, whether that was a conscious choice of hers or not, he noticed it. “I’m not saying that I didn’t love him. Because I did. I really did. But we were really young and who knows what would have happened if…if he had made it home. He died. In 1915. I’d be lying to you if I said that didn’t influence my decision to join as a combat nurse.”

He coughed, “You don’t have to tell me this, Sam. You don’t owe me anythin’, you know that, ‘ey?”

She nodded, now looking at him dead on. “I know that. But I want to. After what Billy said it just didn’t feel right for me to not tell you. I wanted you to know.”

Tommy Shelby looked at her for quite some time, his cigarette burning in between his fingers as he did so. She was even prettier in the moonlight, with her hair braided off to the side and her breath coming out in small puffs that turned the air white around her. He decided then that it didn’t matter to him that she had been engaged before. Hell, he’d been all but engaged himself before he left for France. There was no controlling someone’s past, he knew that well, and he knew that if he wanted her to accept him for who he was—which he needed to if he were to have any sort of chance with her—her past couldn’t matter just as his couldn’t.

“Well,” he began, tossing his almost-burnt-out cigarette onto the ground and stepping on it to extinguish it. “Thank you for telling me. But truly, you didn’t have to. I have something I want to tell you, too, but you have to promise me you won’t get mad at me.”

Even in the dim light of the moonlight, he could see Sam’s eyebrow quirk in confusion, “O—kay? I promise?”

Thomas couldn’t help the small smile that spread across his face as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the nurse’s registration letter. The one that informed Samantha that her registration had been accepted and that she was officially allowed to practice as a nurse. The one that Tommy obtained by forging records.

He handed it over to her, much to her confusion, “What’s this?” she said. “I can barely read it in this light, you know.”

“Well try your best,” he laughed lightly, scratching at the back of his neck as she struggled to read the letter. “It’s, uh, a letter confirming your nursing registration. It says you can start practicing whenever you want, you just need to bring that letter with you to the interview.”

The silence that hung in the air between them then was more awkward than the one before when Samantha felt the need to explain herself to him. As she continued to stare at the letter, not saying anything, Tommy began to fear that he had overstepped his bounds. After all, he had forged the documents the day that he met her, and if that wasn’t a little crazy, he didn’t know what was.

But at the time he had just wanted to do something nice for the Taylor family. He had felt like he owed her something, and at the time it was probably the least that he could do. Tommy didn’t expect that the Taylor girl would make his palms sweaty just by looking at him with those stunning eyes of hers. He would have never guessed that the sweaty, pale man who had lumbered into his life quite accidentally would lead him to this beautiful person, both inside and out.

He hadn’t known her long, and he would be the first to admit that his feelings felt whirlwind and that he felt a little sick from them. But he couldn’t tell up from down when looking at her, and he honestly didn’t care. In such a short amount of time, Samantha had shown him how good of a person she was, how much she really cared for those around her and how that’s all she wanted to do in life. Maybe it had something with his desire to rise in rank through the world and thinking that he would need a good woman to do it, or maybe it was the fact that Samantha’s goodness melted away the darkness that encased his heart. She, too, had seen terrible things during the War. And even though she had never told him about them, and he doubted he would hear of them anytime soon, she was a shining example of who he wished he could be. Tommy wished that he could shut out the bad and focus on the good, focus on the now. It would take some effort, sure, but Samantha made him want to try. Samantha made him want to try even hard to become a better man, a more stable man. To make his family more stable.

All of that in such a short amount of time, too. His brothers would surely call him insane.

“What—how did you get this?” She finally asked. He noticed that her hands were trembling, the cigarette in her right-hand discarding ash in the shaking limb.

“I may have told a lie or two.” Tommy stood unmoving, his hands still in his pockets. “But regardless of how I got it, I got it, and you don’t have to go to school. Unless you want to go to nursing school because I can probably arr—"

He was abruptly caught off by Samantha leaping forward with a soft, small shriek of happiness as her arms flew around his neck, her cigarette discarded to the side and the letter delicately crunched up in her hand. And then her lips were on his, and as caught off guard as Thomas Shelby was, he also relaxed immensely and on instinct grabbed a light hold of her waist. 

Just as quick as she had done it, she pulled away though—completely. Her arms unwrapped from his neck and she took a step away from him, her arms once again crossed against her chest. “I’m—wow. I apologize. I don’t know what came over me. That was highly inappropriate. I’m going to go back to bed, I think, thank you—thank you for this, truly, I don’t know how to thank you. I don’t think you truly understand how much this means—”

“Sam?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

Thomas Shelby reached forward and tugged on her arm, pulling her into him. He wrapped one arm around her waist and cupped her cheek with his free hand before reuniting their lips.

And all he could think about was how this was, in that moment, everything he wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh! It happennnned. Hi! I hope y'all had an awesome holiday! And I hope this was worth the wait! 
> 
> I'd love to hear your predictions, if you have any, and as always I'd love to hear what you think of this chapter and of the work in general. 
> 
> Also--there is a severe red flag warning for winds in my area until Saturday, I'm hoping it doesn't knock out power, but if there is no update on Friday it's because I have no internet lol. Just a heads up(: 
> 
> Thanks guys! Much love x
> 
> **Note 12/4/2020: if you're just reading this now, or you're rereading--yes my power got knocked out! I've been without power for two (almost three) days and just got it back today. I've been trying to get things back in order (like restocking a fridge full of now-spoiled food...) and catching up on work, but I was able to write some today and hope to post tomorrow! Thanks for your patience (:


	7. Chapter 7

When morning broke and the sun’s rays began to peek in through the small gap in her window coverings, Sam had already been awake for at least an hour, maybe more. She still felt the ghost of his lips against hers; as she lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, Sam let the pads of her fingers run across her lips, wondering if last night actually happened. None of it felt real—not the hand on her thigh that she clutched tightly, not the nursing registration, not the kiss. It felt like she was sitting in the audience of a picture house and all she was missing was a bucket of popcorn.

But as she turned her head towards the window, the folded registration was staring back at her. Proof positive that last night happened. Proof positive that she had, indeed, kissed Thomas Shelby.

The thought was terrifying enough on its own. Moving on from William wasn’t something that she had had time to think about the past few years. She grieved, wore one of his ties around her arm underneath her uniform. But one day—she couldn’t remember when it happened, exactly—she didn’t put it on before buttoning up her uniform blouse. It wasn’t like she had forgotten him or like she ever would. But in the heat of war, when the only things that Samantha had time to worry about was the lives of the soldiers in the med tents and her own, her grief faded. It was still there—she could feel it in the far recesses of her mind where if she poked at it she was sure the damn would explode—but it didn’t _hurt_ anymore. Not like it used to.

Moving on from William, therefore, was terrifying. Because the grief didn’t hurt. Because her sadness had left her and no longer did she cry out for a love gone by in the middle of the night. But the possibility that letting herself relax and love (what a strange word to use in regard to Tommy) could very well open that wound up again stuck with her, nearly taking her breath away. If that grief reared its ugly head once more, it would surely mean the ending of any budding relationship.

To add onto all of that, the fact that Thomas Shelby was the one who she was pondering moving on with made the situation even more petrifying. She didn’t know the first actual thing about Thomas. She knew enough to know that what he didn’t wasn’t entirely legal. That had been established and reiterated in her mind over and over again over the past few weeks as they corresponded through letters. And that was scary. Could she, _should_ she, even consider moving on with someone she didn’t even know?

She supposed that that was the whole part of courting someone, though. Getting to know them and seeing if you were truly compatible with each other.

But there was a nagging feeling in her gut that was telling her this was not the type of man she would want to know intimately.

It took one flash of the previous night, when Thomas Shelby grabbed her waist so delicately as he took her in his arms, for Samantha Taylor to decide that she didn’t care. That she was going to throw caution to the wind.

A loud, slightly laborious sigh came from her lips as she pushed herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. As if she had just made some life changing decision that she would have to stick to for the rest of her life. Samantha didn’t even know if Thomas Shelby had been having the same weird and confusing feelings towards her as she did him.

There was hope in her heart, though, for if he hadn’t then why would he go through all the trouble of forging paperwork stating that she had worked as a live-in nurse for the Shelby family so that she would have that extra year she needed to qualify for the registry? It couldn’t have been an easy feat, and why would he do it for _her_ , of all people?

Samantha couldn’t deny the fact that she felt a little sick to her stomach at the thought of her nursing registration being a fraud. That was not how she wanted to go about things. But she loved being a nurse; even in the darkest days of the war when she had to flip up the sheets on one too many men, she loved what she did and knew that she wanted to continue to do it when she returned home. Thomas Shelby had given her the opportunity on a silver platter, and now she was determined not to ruin it.

Just before the two of them retired to their rooms, Tommy said that there was a small stipulation that came with the nursing paperwork. He had said that Samantha would need to come back to Small Heath in a week’s time to work in either the local hospital or the pharmacy—for collaboration purposes, of course. He’d told her that it would be best to have witnesses of her performing nursing duties in Small Heath if someone, at some point, began asking questions about the validity of her nursing registration. Though he had also reassured her that that was unlikely.

Could she leave again, just like that? She knew deep down that it was the right choice, perhaps her only choice, but there was a knot in her throat at the idea of leaving her mother alone again. Especially for a life a man she barely knew was beginning to set up for her.

Samantha’s jumbled thoughts were halted by a knock at her door, followed by her mother’s soft voice telling her that breakfast was on the table. A quick glance at the clock on her bedside table told her that she had been throwing the morning away, being wrapped up in her thoughts like that.

So she was quick to stand from the bed and remake the bedding in a timely manner before making her way across the room to her closet. As she rifled through her clothes, she pulled a hairbrush through her hair and chewed on the end of her toothbrush for a moment, letting it hang in her mouth pathetically before she actually picked an outfit and therefore brushed her teeth. A deep red dress with lace capped sleeves was her outfit of choice for the day, and Samantha tugged up her stockings and slipped on her black shoes before making her way out of the room.

The whole house smelled like tea and cinnamon, and if she had to guess her mother was making some sort of coffee cake on account of there being a guest within the home—someone to spoil and take her mind off of her husband. Over the course of the dinner last night, as her mother roamed about the dining room and conversed with the guests, Samantha would catch glimpses of her mom’s eyes and how they were constantly glassy. How she seemed worn down and tired. She could only imagine the grief that her mother held onto, only releasing it behind closed doors. Her father had made it out of the war relatively unscathed—Sam figured that her mother carried a good amount of guilt for letting Billy leave town the way that he did.

She knew that her mother wouldn’t share any of her grief with her, it just wasn’t who she was.

As she got closer to the dining room, Samantha could hear her mother and Tommy laughing about one thing or another, and it actually made the young girl pause. It made her realize just how long it’d been since she had been home. Three years of her life had been spent on the warfront, tending to victims of gunshot wounds and bomb blasts. The sound of the two of them laughing, even though Sam knew that Tommy was, well, Tommy, made her feel like a little girl again. It brought her back to all of the times she would wake up on Saturday mornings when her father was home that weekend and she could hear her parents cracking jokes and just genuinely enjoying life together.

It made her smile, and it made her heart flutter, too. For it was Tommy in there making her mother laugh, only making what she was beginning to feel for him all the more real.

When she entered the room, her mother patted the seat next to her, the one sitting directly across from Tommy. And so that’s exactly where she sat, taking the empty cup in front of her and pouring herself a cup of tea, all the while feeling Tommy’s eyes on her as he still conversed with her mother. The feeling of him looking at her was enough to make her blush, and she looked up at him as she raised the teacup up to her mouth and took a sip, a ghost of a smile appearing on her lips.

He was quick to return in, “Mornin’, Samantha.”

“Good morning, Thomas. Did you sleep well?”

“Very well, thank you. Yourself?”

“I slept just fine, thank you.”

Pleasantries meant to throw her mother off of whatever trail she may have been on. If she was even on one in the first place. Samantha didn’t know if she would be able to deal with her mother talking to her about the possibility of a budding romantic interest, not when Sam was faced with the task of telling her mother that she was moving to Small Heath and certainly not when Jane had just lost her husband. It felt wrong to talk about any sort of feelings or romance. Like it would upset her mother if it the topic was brought up.

Jane cut in, “So what’s on the agenda today, hm? I was wondering if you two would be willing to accompany me to the shops. I have some errands to run.”

Samantha, who was in the middle of putting jam on her toast, was caught off guard by Tommy’s answer, “Not a problem at all; I’d be happy to. I’m not sure about Sam, though.”

She hadn’t been expecting him to stick around for the day, but she would be lying if she said that there wasn’t a swell in her chest when he said that he would. Even though Samantha knew that she was going to be headed back to Small Heath soon to begin work with her nursing registration, she wasn’t yet ready to see Tommy depart from London. Not after last night, not when she needed some sort of confirmation for her own feelings. She needed to know whether what she was feeling was out of excitement over the registration, or if she was really beginning to see something in Tommy Shelby. Her earlier back-and-forth with her own mind meant that she was leaning towards the latter, but she still needed to know.

“Of course I’ll go. I’d be happy to.”

~*~

The three of them strolled along London’s endless streets, winding this way and that as Jane Taylor consistently disappeared into the many shops that lined the streets. Samantha didn’t really know what her mother needed to do—it seemed like general errands that weren’t of any particular importance—but she didn’t mind being out in the fresh air with her mother and with Tommy. It was nice to have this glimpse of returning back to normal life, something she’d missed something fierce while in Belgium. And, she supposed, if she were her mother she wouldn’t want to be alone right now, either. Having people to keep her company was probably keeping her mother’s mind off of other things that were rattling around in her mind.

Tommy walked closely alongside her as her mother popped in and out of stores, always a few steps in front of them unless there was something she wanted to talk to the two of them about.

“Have you thought about coming back to Small Heath?” Tommy asked quietly, one hand in his pants pocket and the other holding a cigarette up to his mouth. He took a long, deep drag that surely rattled around in his lungs then held the cigarette out to Sam.

She took it as he exhaled, taking her own puff and nodding her head, “Considering it’s not even been a full twenty-four hours since you’ve brought the idea up, I have thought about it quite a lot.” Sam winked at him, taking another drag off the cigarette before handing it back off to Tommy. “But yes, I’m thinking that sounds like the best option at the moment. I just need to figure out what to tell my mother. And how to tell her.”

Tommy smiled, a soft sort of smile that probably rarely saw the light of day. She had to admit that it looked good on him, and she felt herself blushing. The dark-haired man looked around, his bright eyes roaming every passerby and every car that passed by them before pulling the cigarette from his lips and breathing out the smoke. Then, and only after her mother had disappeared into the next shop, did Tommy Shelby lean forward and press a soft kiss to her lips. “You’re a smart woman,” he muttered before kissing her again. “You’ll figure it out.”

Unbeknownst to her, and presumably unbeknownst to Tommy, across the street, just beyond where the sunlight could no longer reach around the corner, stood two men who were clearly up to no-good. One was leaning against the bricks, another standing with his hands deep into his pockets. Both of them stood staring at the pair, and both of them shared a look as Samantha and Tommy embraced before they turned around and strolled back the way they came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thank you for your patience! I live in an area with really bad winds and where my house is situated makes it a target for fires...whoo. So I was without power for a couple of days and I am once again in danger of being without power. Apologies if there is no update on Tuesday--if there isn't, assume it is for this reason! 
> 
> On a related note, would you guys rather one long update per week, or do you like the 2x/week uploads with short chapters? Let me know! 
> 
> Love you all, thank you for reading and thank you for the wonderful feedback!


	8. Chapter 8

He was supposed to have been on the train back to Birmingham; he had picked up his ticket while they were out and about, and Jane had offered to pay for his cab back to the train station later that evening, after they had had dinner. Tommy, not being able to turn down a generous offer clearly made out of the kindness of Jane’s heart, accepted.

But dinner came and went, and the three of them sat in the parlor sipping on tea and enjoying the warm comforts of the fire. Samantha and Tommy were careful not to sit too close to one another as they gathered in the parlor room with Mrs. Taylor, and though Tommy was able to keep his cool, it was clear that Sam was having a hard time. On the opposite side of the sofa, Samantha was fidgeting, switching which leg she had crossed over the other one and constantly sitting up and sliding back so that she was fully on the couch. To her mother, it may have not looked more than just an inability to get comfortable, but Tommy noticed how she would shift closer to him and then shift back. He had to hide his smile by sipping on the tea.

He had clearly missed the train by now; it was nearing eleven thirty and the next train wouldn’t be leaving until tomorrow. There was a slight panic that seized his chest—tomorrow would be the seventh, meaning that there was even less time for Tommy to be around his family and get the plan in order before putting the Black Star Day plan into action. But Tommy, though he had to admit that he was worried, and the clock was ticking away, couldn’t say that he necessarily minded. Spending time with Samantha was certainly something he preferred over standing in stuffy Small Heath, working out a way to climb up in the world.

Jane had gone to bed around ten, apologizing that she couldn’t stay up and entertain for longer and apologizing for Tommy’s missing his train. She promised she would reimburse him for the train ticket and buy him a new one as well, but Thomas put a stop to that idea real quick and said that he absolutely wouldn’t dream of it.

So it was just the two of them, then, sitting in front of the fire that they tried to keep going by adding a log every now and then. Sam had shifted on the couch and threw her legs up over Tommy’s lap, and he let an arm drape over her legs. It felt weirdly natural, weirdly comfortable, for him to behave in this way. Thomas Shelby had never had any issue getting girls and it wasn’t as if he ever did _this_ with them; they were certainly the type of interactions that he usually paid for or ones that he sneaked away from soon after they were over. Yet sitting how he was with Samantha didn’t feel weird to him.

“You know, I haven’t heard the shovels. I can’t…I can’t hear the shovels,” he muttered softly, finishing off the rest of his tea and letting his hand drift across Sam’s leg.

She sat up then, pulling her legs from his lap and instead sitting straight up, tucking them underneath her, “What do you mean?”

“I mean that every moment like this, these quiet moments where I don’t have to think too much, that I have had since coming back from France have been plagued with the sounds of shovels hitting the earth. Clank, clank, _clank_ ,” Tommy licked his lips and placed the teacup down onto the saucer that was sitting on the coffee table. “And I haven’t heard them. Not in a few days. I think I’ll have to chalk it up to me being here with you.”

Samantha rolled her eyes, but was smiling at him nonetheless, “Don’t give me that credit, Thomas.” She took a sip of her tea and made a face, it had probably gone cold by now and cold tea wasn’t good in any sense of the word, before setting the cup down on her own saucer next to her. “I wish I could say the same. I mean, obviously not the shovels, but...” there was a faraway look in her eyes then, a look that Tommy had seen on her before, the day that he took her out to lunch. He didn’t pry then, just like he was inclined to not pry now, but the fact remained that he was curious.

Not out of the sense that he wanted to know for the sake of knowing, but because he genuinely felt a connection to Samantha, and he wanted to know if she was comfortable telling him. He’d never come across a woman who had served before; it didn’t matter to him that Sam had been a nurse in the war and not a full-fledged soldier—she’d put her life on the line nevertheless and he was sure that dealing with everything that she had had to deal with couldn’t have been easy. Nurses, from the rare few that he had seen working their way through the various camps, saw more men die than he probably did. Dealt with a lot more blood, too. They had always looked tired and run-down, but they always tried their best to keep spirits high, too.

Before he could ask her what she meant, though, she continued, “But I can hear them crying. Moaning. Begging for death. Somedays there is only so much I can do to keep myself from hearing it. I think—this is going to sound crazy—I think I see them sometimes, too. The ones I couldn’t help. They’ll be standing at the street corner just looking at me, and sometimes I can’t breathe. And the guns…I hear those too. All the time. There was never a moment when I didn’t hear them out there.” He noticed that her hands were shaking now, in fact her whole body was shaking. Tommy reached out, taking one of her hands in his own and squeezing softly. “It’s like when I came home, the war came with me. I’m sure you can relate.”

He didn’t know what to say. _Of cour_ se he felt the same as she did—he could barely sleep at night without dreaming about how he almost died. How the tunnels collapsed, and he was among the only three to make it out. It was probably a form of survivor’s guilt, to say the least, but he didn’t have the words to describe what Samantha was feeling. To him, it seemed like guilt in its purest form.

There were men that she couldn’t save, men that she presumably considered herself responsible for. Tommy knew that feeling all too well. He felt it every time he looked into Samantha’s eyes and saw Billy’s reflection staring back at him.

It didn’t seem like either one of them knew what to say next, and though he would be the first to admit that it wouldn’t be his first choice when picking romantic conversations, Samantha scoot closer and grabbed onto the collar of his shirt, pulling him into her and pressing her lips against his. It had certainly caught him off guard, but Tommy reacted instantly by grabbing hold of her waist.

She climbed on top of him so that she was straddling him, her hands playing with the hair at the back of his neck.

He wouldn’t say that the rest of the night was a blur because that would entail not remembering what happened, and he definitely remembered every moment. He remembered the feeling of Sam’s hair underneath his hands, the way she giggled as he moved them to the floor on the off chance her mother came down. The way her bare skin felt underneath his hands. Her fingers running down his back, nails pressing into his skin. Oh yes, he remembered it all, and he remembered it well.

Tommy literally couldn’t have created a more perfect woman in his dreams.

And he was falling, oh _man_ was he falling.

~*~

Over the next few days, Tommy found himself recalling that night over and over again, replaying each and every moment like it was his own personal motion picture. They’d laid together, bare skinned and curled up in each other in front of the fire, for what seemed like an eternity. There hadn’t been much conversation, but when there was, Tommy had felt himself grow more and more attracted to Samantha by means of becoming closer to her.

He’d damn hope they were closer after what they did on her mother’s parlor floor—but regardless, Samantha was actually, genuinely, opening up to him. He heard about her childhood and how she had never really known what it was that she wanted to do in the world. Tommy, in a way, understood. He wasn’t a woman, so he didn’t have a definite grasp on things, but he knew enough to understand that there weren’t many prospects for women in terms of aspirations. From everything society taught, women were expected to stay inside and raise a family. He didn’t have to know Samantha personally to know that that was not who she was as a person.

As she got older, she had told him, she knew that she wanted to help people. So she resolved to being a teacher, figuring that helping young children learn their ABCs was better than not helping anyone at all. “But now that I have a taste for medicine…I don’t want to stop. I’ve considered becoming a doctor,” she murmured softly, tracing small circles on Tommy’s chest with her forefinger. “But it’s so difficult. By the time I actually made it into medical school I’m sure I’d be well into my fifties. There aren’t a lot of women admitted to the association every year; I’d be lucky if they even considered me.”

He had forged paperwork to help Samantha seek out her dream of being a registered nurse, but there was nothing Tommy could do about doctor-related paperwork. She would need proof that she graduated from medical school, something that Tommy just couldn’t get for her. He decided, however, that she wasn’t too pent up about the inability to go to medical school. The way that her eyes had lit up the previous night had told him that Samantha loved being a nurse, and he knew that it was a good career move for her.

As he sat in his office, a hundred and twenty miles or so from Samantha, he found himself relishing in the fact that her being a nurse would make it easier for them, too. Whatever they were, exactly. There hadn’t been any mention of what their sleeping together meant, or whether there were suddenly new cards on the table that came with new expectations of each other. Samantha, when she had gone to see him off on the train back to Birmingham, had seemed content with the way things had gone while Tommy was up in London, and Tommy decided that he was okay with it, too.

He had never really fallen in love before. Sure, there had been Greta before he had gone away to war. And she had made him happy, so unbelievably happy—he’d wanted to marry her, even. But they were young, and she was sick, and Tommy realized years later that while he’d loved Greta with all of his heart, he hadn’t ever fallen in love with her.

Tommy didn’t know what it meant to fall in love with a person. He wasn’t a big reader, so it wasn’t like he was reading any romantic novels or anything about people falling in love with one another, but he had to imagine that it was just as it was described in the books. Whatever books those were, he wasn’t too sure, but he knew they existed. And John told him what it was like, too, to fall in love with someone, though the words weren’t all there and it was more of a series of “you know what I mean”s. Tommy could see it on John’s face how much his brother loved Esme, and if falling in love meant looking at someone as though they were the sun, then Tommy could deal with the concept, scary as it was.

They’d asked about her when he returned; John and Arthur had been at the train station to accompany Tommy home, and all they could talk about was how they’d never seen Tommy have such a skip in his step. They were quite vulgar at times—when were they not?—and Tommy had to seriously bite down on his tongue to keep him from swinging at them when they made a crude comment about Samantha. He didn’t like hearing about her in that way. She wasn’t just some woman in a bar that they were chatting up or ogling like she was a piece of meat. She was Samantha, and she was the most radiant woman Tommy had ever met.

 _Radiant_. Now when did he start using words like that to describe women, eh?

But it was the truth. And he couldn’t deny his brothers all of the details, try as he might. So Tommy did admit to the pair’s romantic rendezvous for the past few days, starting with dinner and ending with sex on the carpet. John had laughed and asked if he got a carpet burn. It took everything Tommy had not to thwack him upside the head—though he did smile.

Samantha, as she kissed him goodbye on the platform, promised that she would be in Small Heath in a week’s time. A week seemed a small price to pay to have Samantha just down the street, but Tommy was anxious to have her here. To get to bother her whenever he wanted. Neither one of them knew the details of where she was to live or work (specifically—obviously somewhere where she could put the nursing registration to use) while she was here, but it didn’t seem like either one of them were too concerned about that. Just about the time between them.

That was a few days ago, when Tommy had gotten back on the seventh, and now it was the tenth. It was Black Star Day, and he and the boys were about to head out to the car so that they could make their way to the races, and Tommy Shelby was daydreaming about the London brunette with the killer legs.

He tapped his pen against the ledger beneath him, seeing the words on the page but being unable to process them. He wasn’t sure if that was because he was too preoccupied with the woman he was smitten over or if his mind was beginning to fade because of the thumping in his chest. He could hear his heart hit his ribcage, could feel it, too—in his ears, in his fingers—as his nerves got the better of him. Tommy knew that if he was going to be nervous, then now would have to be the time to be nervous. He’d already sent men ahead to scout out positions and to be ready for when the rest of them arrived, so when he stepped out of his office, Tommy knew he had to be ready. He would have to put on the strong and brave face that he was expected to maintain at all times.

He was Thomas _fucking_ Shelby, he wasn’t supposed to be afraid of anything.

The dark-haired man had resigned to closing the ledger and dealing with it another day—the bets on the ledger weren’t going to go anywhere, after all—and he really did need to start putting his energy towards what was mere hours away. That was more important, after all.

He stood from the desk and tossed the pen onto the book, placing an unlit cigarette into the corner of his mouth and bringing his lighter up to it. He’d nearly lit it, too, when his younger brother Finn came crashing into his office, his face red and his chest heaving in a panic, “Tommy! Tommy, Kimber—he’s outside. He’s _here_!”

There wasn’t even a full minute to process what Finn was saying before Arthur and John were there, too, all of them talking a mile a minute and all of them saying the same thing: Kimber was in Small Heath, not at the race track.

All of the blood rushed from Tommy’s head and he wobbled a bit, needing to grab the side of his desk so that he didn’t collapse.

Tommy had sent men ahead to the track—there were no longer enough men for an even standoff here in Small Heath, he knew that. He knew that Billy Kimber wasn’t an idiot and that he would never go anywhere without a small army of men loyal to him. To do so otherwise would be a death sentence. Thomas had been counting on getting Kimber alone at the races and overthrowing him then, so that each man would have a pairing on the Shelby side and it would be like taking candy from a baby.

Now it seemed as though there was no way out.

Possibilities were running through Tommy’s head as to who told Kimber about Black Star Day and what it meant. There weren’t many people that had access to the Shelby family diary, and those that did didn’t really know what that star would mean. How could day? Any ordinary person would believe that it was just a way to mark out an important appointment of some sort.

Arthur? No, definitely not, not when he stood to gain from Kimber’s takedown. Same went for John. Polly rarely saw the diary unless there was something she needed to be concerned with specifically and Ada wanted absolutely nothing to do with the family business—Tommy had only just met his nephew upon his return from London—and Finn was way too young to even begin to concern himself with the family business. No one outside of the family had access to that diary except… well Tommy’s blood, whatever hadn’t left him yet, ran cold.

Grace was the only one outside of the family who had had access to the diary and who knew what the black star meant. But why would Grace have told Kimber? Did she even tell him directly?

Polly had come to Tommy a few weeks ago, soon after Grace had first shown up, and had told him that there was something off about the Irish girl and that she couldn’t be trusted. It wasn’t long after Grace showed up that the Inspector, who had been trailing Tommy for months over some stupid guns that Thomas accidentally picked up and was now hoarding for his own gain, seemed to know the ins and outs of where the Shelbys kept some of their contraband. He wanted to be mad at himself for not realizing it sooner, but Tommy didn’t exactly have time to be mad at himself. There were bigger things to worry about then, and if he survived today and ever saw Grace—or that damn Inspector—again, he would definitely let them know what he thought of them.

All around him, everyone was scrambling for their guns, not even bothering to tuck them into their waistbands or their holsters. There wasn’t time to primp and prepare. Death was on their doorstep, and they were going to have to fight like hell in order to ensure that they all made it out alive.

“Thomas fucking Shelby!” came Kimber’s nasally voice followed by a gun shot that Tommy could feel ringing in his ears, even from within the confines of the betting house. “Get your ass out here, _now_!”

There was a voice in the back of his head that told Tommy not to do it. That going out there would certainly be suicide. But Thomas quickly overruled that little voice because this was his plan. He was the head of the Shelby family and if he wasn’t going to be strong and brave right then, then he had absolutely no business in trying to infiltrate the racing business.

Tommy, John and Arthur stepped out into the street, the three of them coming face to face with at least twenty of Kimber’s men with Kimber himself standing at the front of the pack.

He was ready to start shooting blindly and hope for the best, knowing that the rest of the men who had stayed behind would burst out of the betting shop the moment Tommy gave the okay—gunshots would have to be the okay—and would follow suit. But how many would survive that? The Peaky Blinders were terribly outnumbered.

All Tommy wanted was for Kimber’s stupid grin to leave him alone for the rest of his life, and without forming a complete thought, Tommy raised his gun and sucked in a breath, aiming the weapon at Billy Kimber’s head.

“Tommy!”

It was _her_ voice. It cut through his focus, it cut through the thudding in his chest. The fog in Tommy’s mind began to fade, then, and he was no longer solely focused on the vendetta that had exploded in his face. He could see clearly that this was no longer a matter of who had more men, because Kimber had all of the cards that mattered. He had more men with him, more guns, the police on his side, and a struggling brunette in his arms.

Samantha was here, in Small Heath, Kimber’s arm wrapped around her neck and her hands desperately grasping at it, trying to keep it from tightening around her throat. The betting man grinned at Tommy from no more than ten feet away and cocked his gun, pressing it up behind Samantha’s ear. Thomas felt his muscles kick into motion then, and he lurched forward, his free hand extended out towards Kimber and his gun now pointed downwards, “Don’t hurt her, alright? We can talk this out, ‘ey?”

“You lost the right to have a talk when you plotted to betray me, you Birmingham filth! You think you can just waltz right into the racing business and begin upheaving things, ‘ey?! That’s not how this works, Shelby!” Kimber pressed the gun more firmly against Samantha’s temple. The way she cried out made Tommy’s heart ache.

And then the gunshot echoed across the cobblestone street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I know it's Wednesday...I'm sorry. Little bit of a longer update! I think I'm gonna upload at least once a week, and I'll tryyyy to make them as long as possible (why do they always look longer in word...). But tbh I'm always just excited to get the next part out so sometimes I cut chapters short sooo sometimes (probably most of the time) I will stick to the 2x/week upload schedule(: 
> 
> Let me know how you liked this one!! Also...how we feelin on that "smut" scene. Not enough, too much? Just right? I never know how people want those things described ya know. So lemme know how we feel about that, too. 
> 
> Love you all! Again thank you all for the wonderful love on this!


	9. Chapter 9

Ever since she had seen Tommy off at the train station, Samantha had been thinking about how she was going to tell her mother that she was moving. She knew that, truly, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal and that her mother would, in the long run, see that this move would be a good thing for Sam and her budding career (though she hadn’t yet told her mother about the nursing certificate—she needed to work out how she was going to explain that one). However, there was the fear that the city she was going to, the city where her mother lost her father, would never be seen as a good city. Not to her mother. The thought of her mother consistently trying to talk her out of the move purely because it was Small Heath, of all places, crossed her mind. She was sure that the city was never going to restore a good reputation in her mother’s eyes.

But then again, neither would Belgium.

The country that her mother once adored and vacationed at with her own parents when she was a young girl was forever tarnished when Sam was sent to the warfront there. She was sure that Jane Taylor felt the same about France, too. Her mother was fiercely loyal to the family and would do absolutely anything for them—including understanding that Billy and Samantha had felt an overwhelming obligation to volunteer for the war effort. Not volunteering hadn’t been an option for them.

Mrs. Taylor had accepted it, begrudgingly, but that didn’t mean that she would ever forgive the countries they were sent to. As if the soil Billy and Samantha had stood on made the war decisions.

Samantha figured that that’s where her mother’s mind already was in terms of Small Heath, Birmingham. A small district in a city that wasn’t known to be the safest to begin with; a district that became the site of her husband’s untimely death. Jane Taylor knew how to hold a grudge—against place and person alike.

Maybe though, just maybe, her mother would understand that Samantha was moving there for her career. Even though the idea of working with forged registration paperwork still sent chills down her spine, Samantha knew that Tommy was right. If someone down the road began asking questions, it would be good for her to have some witnesses to corroborate her working in Small Heath for a period of time. Eventually she knew she would get over the fact that her paperwork was fake, but for now she was just excited about the prospect of actually starting her own life.

A week certainly gave her enough time to go through her things and figure out what she was going to bring with her and what she wasn’t going to, and yet Samantha found herself up in her room with two suitcases opened on the bed and clothes strewn from her closet across the bedroom floor. Whether it was excitement or nerves that drove her to go through her things at that very moment, she’d never know, she just knew that doing something productive eased her thoughts about Tommy. Which hadn’t stopped racing since she left the train station.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the other night. Every time she did, her skin would alight and tingle as if Tommy was still there with her, dragging his fingertips across her bare skin. Sam had never felt that way before with anyone, not even William. The way her body reacted to Tommy’s touch was unlike anything she’d ever experienced, and it both excited and terrified her. Even after the conversation that followed their romantic romp, Samantha still felt as though there was a big puzzle piece that was missing from Tommy’s life. Something that he was deliberately not telling her, and something that was definitely holding her back from embracing her feelings.

There was one half of her that was screaming at her to just let go, to throw caution to the wind and figure out the rest later. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t allow herself to fall for Thomas Shelby when there was clearly something important that he was hiding from her. It’d be one thing if it was just bad finances or nightmares from the war, but if he was hiding something big—like one of his brothers being a psychopathic killer, then that was something that Samantha felt she had a right to know.

Then again, though, Tommy didn’t owe her anything. She wasn’t anything to him. As much as she had hoped for it, there hadn’t been a conversation that came up between the two of them regarding what that night meant for the both of them. Where they stood after the fact. She had been hoping that Tommy would have brought it up while they waited at the train station, but he seemed perfectly content to not talk about what happened at all. The thought made her queasy.

She was really, genuinely, about to leave everything she’d ever known for a position that a shady guy she slept with got her. A shady guy who wouldn’t put a label on them.

Samantha gave a sigh of frustration and threw a sweater down into one of the suitcases, not bothering to fix the crumpled heap it ended up in. _Of course_ he wouldn’t put a label on whatever it was they were. As much as it annoyed her that she didn’t really know Tommy, she did have to remind herself that they’d only known each other for a few weeks, nearing a month at this point. They’d only spent a few days together at most and most of their communication had been through letters sent back and forth over those weeks.

She supposed the anxiety about knowing where Tommy stood came from how adamant William had been from the start. He’d laid out his intentions very plainly at the beginning and Samantha never had to wonder what it was that he wanted from her. Sam had to tell herself that Tommy wasn’t William, and that he didn’t have to try to be.

At this point her room was an absolute wreck of clothing, with her suitcases not even bearing a fraction of anything that she had pulled out of her closet. She was still torn between packing now and telling her mother matter-of-factly that it was happening and packing later when she didn’t have to worry about anything. Sam figured that packing later, after she’d told her mother, would at least give her a clearer mind to the point where she’d be able to reasonably go through her things to determine what she would take with her and what she wouldn’t.

Samantha gave up on packing, then, and made her way out of her room and down the stairs. Her mother was currently out grocery shopping for the upcoming week, so Samantha didn’t bother with manners as she began rifling through the cupboards for something to eat. She still hadn’t adjusted to eating regular food again rather than the gross emergency rations that had been contained in bottles and re-boiled over several periods of time. Sometimes, when she ate something that was rather vinegary or salty, she felt as though she was eating canned pork that had come out of the rations box for the nurses. It usually turned her off of eating for the rest of the day.

She grabbed bread, some ham from the fridge (leftover from the celebration of life dinner they had had a few nights prior), and some cheese, deciding on a simple sandwich that she had grown up with. It was once the only thing she could get her dad to make for her, as he usually had one too. As she assembled her sandwich, Samantha hummed to herself, finding the peace and quiet of the house a nice change—but certainly an adjustment. Usually, her mind would be recreating the worst parts of her war time experiences when there was nothing else going on, but perhaps it was the fact that there was so much going on in her head already that her mind didn’t think it necessary to make room for traumatic experiences.

Samantha had just finished her sandwich and grabbed herself a glass of water when there was a knock at the door. She was slightly annoyed, as the sudden grumbling in her stomach told her that she would rather be sitting down to eat than dealing with whomever it was at the door, but she also knew that it would be extremely impolite of her to ignore the caller. So she wiped her hands across a dish towel and sighed, making her way from the kitchen to the front door.

She stood on her tiptoes to look up into the peephole, very surprised to see who was standing on the other side.

Billy Kimber stood there, and from what she could tell through the small peephole, he was pacing back and forth on the front stoop and biting his nails, occasionally running a hand through his hair. It was behavior that she had never seen him exhibit before in the years that she’d known him, so it was certainly worrying to say in the least. Samantha unlatched and unlocked the front door, “Billy? What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”

“Miss Taylor, thank God,” he breathed. It caught her off guard—Billy never called her Miss Taylor, not once. The notion alone was enough to make her suspicious, so she took a small step back into the home and closed the door slightly so that only her head was peeking through. Even though it wasn’t the best, she also reinforced the door with her foot, bracing the side of it against the bottom of the door, out of sight.

Billy didn’t seem to notice the sudden change in her behavior, however, for he just continued on with his frantic behavior, “You have to come with me, and quick. It’s Tommy. He’s hurt. Badly.”

Tommy? Hurt? How could that be? Samantha had just seen him days prior and he had been perfectly fine and healthy when she had seen him. Not a single visible scratch on him. Yet there wasn’t time for her to question the statement because if Tommy really was hurt and really needed medical attention, then she couldn’t doubt that. That was something she’d learned rather quickly on the warfront—every second counted, and oftentimes there were situations where she didn’t have the time to even think about what she was going to do next. She just had to do it.

Samantha, with her mind going a mile a minute, didn’t have time to question whether or not Tommy had sought medical attention with the doctors available in Small Heath or how Billy Kimber even knew that Tommy needed medical help, she just sprang into action. She was quick to reach over and grab her shoes that had been discarded near the front door and walked out, hopping across the pavement as she secured her heels on her stocking-covered feet. “Where is he, currently?” She asked as she made her way to the car she knew to be Billy’s, already beginning to roll up the sleeves on her white blouse. “What happened?”

“I’m terribly sorry about this, Sam.”

She half turned, in the middle of rolling up her sleeve, “What?”

She got her answer in the form of the butt of a revolver to her jaw.

~*~

Her head _hurt_. Terribly. There was a severe thumping that felt as though her brain was pounding against her skull. Her vision was incredibly blurry, and she couldn’t hear all that well. But Samantha was nevertheless coming to, and the more conscious she became, the more she realized what, exactly, was happening.

Her hands were crudely tied together with rope that was thick and clearly used to lead horses around, and she was stuffed in the backseat of Billy’s car. Sam groaned, lifting her hands up to her mouth and wiping at the corners as best she could. Dried blood smeared across her skin as she did so, and Samantha groaned in pain again as the thumping in her head only got worse.

And as much as she was coming to realize that Kimber had been lying to her about Tommy being hurt and that he had just legitimately kidnapped her, she couldn’t understand why. Kimber had been a friend of the family’s for a very long time, so to be tied up in the back of his car was a clear mystery to her. If she had to guess, it had something to with what Tommy was involved in. Which meant that Kimber was involved in it, too.

“What’s going on?” she finally murmured as she found her voice. “Where am I?”

Kimber, who was riding in the passenger seat of his own car, turned to look at her. And a small smile spread across his face. “Look who’s awake. Don’t worry about it. We’re almost there.”

Almost _where_? She wanted to ask--but asking where she was the first time had taken so much energy out of her that she didn’t think she had it in her to ask again. Not that it really mattered. It wasn’t like she was in the position to do anything to help herself at this point. Besides, she had never had any kind of combat training. That wasn’t a thing required of combat nurses, so she wouldn’t know the first thing about protecting herself or fighting back against captors. If you asked her, it was definitely an overlooked part of the training that she believed they should have received, but it wasn’t like she could go back and change that. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized that her mother would have absolutely no idea where she was. The sandwich that hadn’t been touched should be evidence enough for her mother to realize that she wasn’t planning on going anywhere, as well as the fact that Samantha’s handbag was still in the front entryway, but that wasn’t enough clues for her mother to figure out what was going on or where Samantha had been taken. If she even realized that Samantha had been taken in the first place.

It was the smell that alerted her to where they were, and Samantha wriggled in the seat so that she could sit up against the cushioned car seats and look out onto the landscape around her. Where she had half expected long rolling hills of a place Kimber planned to shoot and bury her, she found instead the cobblestone streets of Small Heath, the smell of industrial work floating in and invading her nostrils.

Her heart seized in a panic.

There was no denying it now—this most definitely had something to do with Tommy.

The streets seemed unusually empty for the time of day, and Samantha found herself struggling against the rope that tied her wrist together as Billy ordered the car to be parked. She recognized the area, recognized the building they were stopping in front of as the betting shop that the Shelby brothers owned.

All of that time she had spent wondering what Tommy was involved in and whether or not that would be preventing her from letting herself fall was suddenly crowding right in front of her face. This sort of thing was what Tommy was involved in, and Samantha was caught in the middle of it. She was scared shitless. She had absolutely no idea what she had done to deserve getting involved in this whole thing—whatever the “thing” was—but she found herself beginning to hyperventilate as she panicked more and more.

It wasn’t like there was a bomb shelter she could go cower in or a bed she could cry in. She was thoroughly trapped in this small car and knew that she could not outrun Kimber and his men if she tried to make a run for it once they all stepped out of the car.

Once the car was fully stopped, Billy stepped out of the vehicle and opened Samantha’s door, grabbing her arm roughly and dragging her from the car. Samantha yelped, the sudden jolt making her head spin and her legs wobbly as her feet hit the pavement. Billy, with one arm still holding her tight, undid the bonds on her hands, “If you try to run, I swear to God I will shoot you. You understand?”

Samantha nodded meekly, feeling the blood drain from her body and making her feel sick to her stomach.

That’s how she found herself facing the three Shelby brothers, with Kimber’s arm wrapped around her neck in a choke hold and her hands desperately grasping and pulling at it to keep it from tightening any further. The cold muzzle of Kimber’s gun was pressed to her head, just behind her ear, and Samantha whimpered as he dug the muzzle into her skull even further. That definitely didn’t help the headache that was still thumping. “Tommy!” she called out as she noticed him raising the gun, aiming in Billy’s general direction.

He didn’t look like himself. There was no trace of a smile and there was not even a sign of life. He just looked reserved, like there was one thing on his mind and he was going to stop at nothing to ensure that he got it. His eyes were murderous, aimed directly at Kimber. Unfortunately, Samantha literally stood in the way of that.

He put the gun down then, one hand extended towards her and the other lowering the gun so that it was now pointed at the ground. “Don’t hurt her, alright? We can talk this out, ‘ey?”

Kimber’s gun pressed even harder against Sam’s skull, and she cried out at the pain it caused. Her head literally felt as though it was going to explode.

“You lost the right to have a talk when you plotted to betray me, you Birmingham filth! You think you can just waltz right into the racing business and begin upheaving things, ‘ey?! That’s not how this works, Shelby!”

She didn’t even see him come out, didn’t even know who he was, really, but knew that he must have had some importance to the Shelby family for he was wielding a rather big gun on their behalf. He was there backing the three brothers up without any of them having to call and ask for it, and that was where the gunshot came from. Not from John, Arthur, nor Thomas. But from that man wielding what looked to be a military-grade gun.

Her heart felt as though it stopped in her chest when the gunshot rang out, and before a full second had even passed, blood exploded across the side of her head and there was an intense ringing in her ears. She couldn’t hear anything at all besides muffled shouting. Her whole body went into panic mode then, and Samantha collapsed onto all fours, every limb violently shaking. There was a burning sensation at the top of her ear, and she brought a shaking hand up to caress it. It was bleeding, that was for sure, and as she placed a hand to the side of her face it became covered in thick, dripping blood. And it wasn’t hers.

Samantha vomited, the warm body fluid and brain matter splattered across her cheek was Kimber’s. She knew blood well, had been around it often, but it’d never been on her face like that. She’d never been so close to the action so as to have the splatter get on her. She threw up again at the thought.

She lost all feeling in her arms as another gunshot rang out, and then another, and another. She laid flat against the street, still unable to hear anything and still incredibly woozy.

Samantha didn’t know how long it went on, or if it even lasted as long as she originally though it did, but suddenly Tommy was kneeling in front of her, gingerly grabbing onto her arms and lifting her up onto her knees.

Seeing him face to face made her breakout into sobs, and she lunged forward and clung to him, every inch of her still shaking.

Samantha was aware that Tommy himself was bleeding from his shoulder—she could feel it leaking onto her as she embraced him—and that she was covering him in blood too. But neither one of them seemed to care as Tommy held onto her just as tight, “Sh, you’re okay. I’ve got you. Are you hurt?”

“Why!? What did I ever do to him?! I didn’t do _shit_!” She sobbed, her hands not being able to keep themselves from trying to wipe off Kimber’s blood from her face. Her ear was dripping blood onto her shirt and neck, mixing in with everything of Kimber’s that had landed there. All she was doing was smearing everything, and it was very clear that Samantha was about a few seconds away from delving into hysterics.

Tommy pushed her away from him slightly so that he could look her in the eyes. He looked pained, he looked distraught. But he also looked relieved. Like a weight had just been taken off of his shoulders, “It’s all my fault, and ‘m sorry, Sam. I’m so, so sorry. C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up.”

He tried to lift her to her feet but her whole body had gone deadweight. She couldn’t even tell herself to try and stand—it was like she wasn’t in control of herself. “How?” she cried, “How is it your fault, damn it?! Did you tell him to do this?!”

“No!” Tommy immediately barked, his tone harsh and cutthroat. He genuinely looked offended that Samantha would even suggest such a thing. “No it’s—it’s my fault because I let my guard down around you. They know how I feel about you, Sam,” he was quiet now, and Samantha watched his Adam’s Apple bob as he swallowed. “I think it was easy for them to see that I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Saturday! Hope y'all enjoyed this one. Let me know what you think. (:


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Sensitive topics ahead.

It’d been two weeks since she’d seen Tommy, nearly a month after the incident with Kimber. Tommy and his brothers had wandered into the private clinic in Small Heath where Samantha worked, the three of them looking for some painkillers. Tommy’s arm hadn’t been healing correctly, and it was causing him a great deal of pain. The physician had quickly scribbled a prescription, not bothering to examine Tommy, before handing the prescription to Samantha and asking her to fill it. So Samantha had unlocked the door to the little pharmacy attached to the clinic and got Tommy his meds.

His brothers were quite talkative, trying to get Samantha to smile or laugh, but Tommy was stone faced and looked at her with a sorrow she’d never seen before.

After the dust had settled, once Kimber’s body had gone cold laying there in the street and his men had dispersed, Samantha came to the harsh reality that she had been avoiding since the moment she met Thomas Shelby. She didn’t know him. Not one bit. Being held hostage with a gun pressed to her temple only affirmed that in her head. With Tommy’s confession brought a whole new wave of panic to her. Was that what it meant to be loved by Tommy Shelby? To fear having a gun pressed to your head at any given time?

It was something that Samantha knew that she didn’t want for herself. She didn’t want to have to continuously look over her shoulder and try to make peace with the fact that she’d always be a target. That he’d always be a target. It made her stomach twist in knots and she had almost been sick on Polly’s rug as she handed her a cup of tea. It had been the first time she had genuinely interacted with Polly, and the older Shelby woman had immediately sprang into action upon seeing the state in which Sam stumbled into the townhouse. John and Arthur were working on getting the bullet out of Tommy’s arm while Polly dragged Sam into the next room and undressed her.

Sam had been too much in shock to really care that she was standing stark naked in front of a woman she had never met before. Couldn’t stop shaking enough to process that Polly was getting her into a bath of cold water, the temperature a complete shock to her system. Polly had gone to work cleaning off the blood and brain matter from Sam’s face, dousing her in cold water over and over again until she deemed her clean.

Polly had braided Samantha’s hair, even rubbed her back and gave her a blanket, but Samantha honestly couldn’t process any of it. Her body didn’t stop shaking for hours, and now, even a month after the incident, she was still having nightmares. Still hearing the sound of the gunshot ring in her ears.

She was sure she would hear it for a very long time.

The main reason, though, about why she hadn’t seen Tommy, was because it would mean coming to terms with the fact that she loved him. Samantha wasn’t willing to accept the fact that danger was where her heart had led her. It made her angry and confused. She wanted to see Tommy and to tell him that she loved him too, but she couldn’t. Because telling him that meant that she was accepting and, quite frankly, embracing the dangerous lifestyle that Tommy led. Samantha didn’t want to be a part of that.

She almost didn’t make the move to Small Heath. But a deal was a deal, and she wanted that nurse’s registration, whether that meant she was with Tommy or not. Though that’d sweeten the deal, honestly.

It was almost a month exactly since the incident, and Samantha was settling into her new life in Small Heath rather nicely. The physician she worked for was a nice older man who, with his wife, allowed Samantha to rent out the basement floor of their townhouse. They never used it and it had a separate entrance. It was like her own apartment, and he was giving he a great deal for it, too. Samantha had been extremely grateful for his generosity, and her mother felt more comfortable knowing that her little girl wasn’t entirely on her own.

Things, besides the nightmares and the constant fear of running into Tommy, were going well. As well as they could, at least. Which is why her heart was thumping hard against her chest as she sat on the physician’s examination table. She hadn’t been feeling well the past two weeks. her lower back ached and she had had more headaches than seemed normal for her. And then she realized her cycle was off by about a week.

She was positive that it was just the stress from the incident coming back to haunt her. After all, it’d only been a month since she and Tommy had had sex. There hadn’t been enough time for a full fertile cycle. There was a voice in the back of her head, whispering that she could have been in the middle of ovulation when they had sex, but she tried to ignore it. Tried to tell herself that she was better at tracking her cycles than that.

But, then again, she’d been away for so long. Hadn’t been with anyone since William. She definitely hadn’t been on top of keeping track of her monthly while she was on the warfront—there were months where she missed the mark completely—so it was entirely possible that Samantha had messed up on her tracking somehow, somewhere.

Her boss, Mr. Owens, had offered to do a full examination when she had come to him with his concerns. She had been worried that he would judge her or that she would lose her job or her residence, but Mr. Owens only nodded, saying that he’d be with her for every step that she wanted him there.

When he came back with the chart in his hands and no smile across his face, Samantha felt like she couldn’t breathe.

~*~

She didn’t know how, exactly, she ended up at her door. Or why, really. But she did know that she used the paper Tommy had left on her front door for the first time. It had arrived shortly after Tommy had gone to the shop to pick up his meds, and it was a list of names and addresses of people he trusted and associated with in Small Heath. He had signed it with a simple “T”, and it was a gesture that made Sam staying away from him even harder.

Sam had used the paper, though, and ended up on the doorstep of Ada Thorne’s house. Soon to be vacant, from what she understood, but nevertheless Ada and her son currently occupied the apartment until they were ready to move back in with the family. So the gossip went, at least.

Out of all the Shelbys, Samantha had interacted with Ada the least, so she wasn’t even sure if Ada was going to be willing to help her out. To Ada, Samantha was just a stranger who her brother had feelings for. A stranger who had left her brother high and dry. But she didn’t want to—couldn’t—go to Tommy’s home and talk to him.

Very obviously, Sam had been having issues processing things. And this…thing, inside her, was just another circumstance that she needed to process. Needed to but couldn’t.

Polly would tell Tommy about the pregnancy, there was no doubt about it, so she was not someone that Samantha felt comfortable talking to about this. Even if Polly had shown a great kindness to her by cleaning her up when they barely knew each other, it just didn’t feel right. Ada, then, was the next best bet.

Samantha was already running a million different scenarios in her head, one of them being Ada kicking her off the front stoop and making her go and tell Tommy that she was pregnant. But she didn’t have time to put much thought into that one, however, for Ada pulled open the door, a fussy baby in her arms.

The other brunette’s features contorted into confusion at the sight of Samantha standing there, in front of the little hidden apartment in the basement of the complex. “Sam? What are you—”

“Do Tommy, by any chance, happen to tell you where my father is buried?”

Ada blinked a few times, licked her lips, and pat the baby’s back, “No, he didn’t.” Samantha’s heart sunk, but Ada continued, “But I’ve seen it. When we’ve gone to see Freddie’s mother. Same cemetery, a few plots away from each other.”

She didn’t really know why she wanted to see her father’s grave so desperately. She had fully moved to Small Heath and had yet to make her way to his gravesite, maybe that had something to do with it—guilt—but maybe the fact that she had something growing inside of her had something to do with it, too. Samantha knew that her father, as traditional as he was, wouldn’t have made a fuss if he knew what was happening in her life. Samantha had clawed her way through the war and was trying to make a name for herself. She was trying her hardest; a little slip up wasn’t enough to fuss over.

Except, in reality, this wasn’t a little slip up. This was something that could drastically alter the way her life turned out. She was twenty-two, and she didn’t think that she was ready to be a mother. Especially not when the baby’s father had demonstrated to her, not of his own hand, who he really was. Was that really someone she wanted to bring a child into the world with?

Samantha felt nauseous, and she instinctively grabbed her stomach, swallowing thickly.

“Are you okay? Are you going to be sick?” Ada asked, reaching out with the hand that wasn’t supporting the baby and placing the back of it against Sam’s forehead. “You’re sweating something fierce, and you’re awfully pale.”

Samantha nodded, ignoring the bile that was building in the back of her throat. “Yes, yes I’m fine. Do you think you could take me? To my father’s grave?”

Ada, without hesitation, nodded, “Just let me grab my coat and I can drop the baby off with the neighbor, okay?”

They were departing the streets of Small Heath rather quickly, Ada making a quick go of ensuring her son would be safe for a few hours before linking arms and walking with Samantha. The pair of them didn’t talk much, Samantha too consumed in her thoughts, but she was grateful that Ada was showing her such kindness. Lord knew that she needed it.

She wondered what Ada thought of her, if she thought anything at all. They’d had maybe two total interactions, and here Ada was, waltzing arm-in-arm with her down the street and out to the cemetery, allowing Samantha to walk in silence, too. If nothing else, it showed the kindness at the depth of Ada’s heart. Which made staying away from Tommy even harder. They came from the same family, and though it was clearly a dangerous family, it was a good one. They were all raised with kindness and respect for others in their hearts. At some point, the world turned cold against the Shelby brothers and they were forced to play the hand that they were dealt, but that didn’t mean that they were any less kind. She knew that somehow, Ada was proof of that.

As the streets slowly began to disappear and the women’s heels began to sink in the soft earth as they made their way onto the country roads, Ada tightened her arm around Sam’s, “So,” she began, casting a sideways glance at Sam underneath her growing bob hairstyle. “Have you told Tommy yet?”

“What? Told him what?”

“That you’re pregnant.”

“I—” Samantha stammered, suddenly feeling clammy and anxious. “I’m not—”

“Sam,” Ada said softly, resting a hand on her arm. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell him. Not if you’re not ready and certainly not if you’re not….y’know.”

There was another option that Sam hadn’t even considered. While she’d been away at war, she’d seen nurses perform their own abortions on each other when one of them accidentally got pregnant with a soldier’s baby. It was one surefire way for the both of them to be kicked out of the military, with the man being stripped of any and all honors. Such a thing was blasphemous, almost. She’d also seen many nurses almost bleed out because of the procedure.

But, nevertheless, it was an option. One that, honestly, hadn’t even crossed her mind.

“How did you know?” Sam asked, her eyes watching her feet as Ada led the pair through the cemetery gates and down the center road before veering right after only a few hundred yards. “I’m most definitely not showing, it’s too damn early for that, and I just—just found out myself.”

Ada’s voice was calm and soft when she responded, “Because you had that look of dread in your eyes. I felt that same sense of dread when I found out I was pregnant, too. It was easy to spot.”

The pair walked down the row of gravesites, many of them belonging to service members that were lost in the war. She found herself wondering how many of them actually lay underneath those plots, how many actually got to come home and be with their families. Her father didn’t. And though his body wasn’t buried in some crude, makeshift grave site on the warfront, having him buried in Small Heath still felt like a world away from where he was meant to be.

Ada pointed out Billy Taylor’s grave, slowly unraveling her arm from Samantha’s and taking a step back so that Samantha could approach the grave on her own. She did so with wobbly unforgiving steps. She hadn’t seen his gravesite yet. She hadn’t seen her father in three years, hadn’t been wrapped up in one of those fatherly hugs that always felt as though he was slightly suffocating her but something that she could really use at that moment. A hug and him telling her that it was all going to be okay, that no matter what she decided she was always going to be his little girl.

Tears were already running down her face by the time Samantha reached her father’s grave. The headstone was a crude thing, clearly created last minute. Which was understandable. No one expected her father to go out then. Least of all her. And yet there she stood, on the mound of dirt that covered his casket. Samantha choked on the sobs that were building up in her throat. What she wouldn’t give to see her father one last time. What she wouldn’t give to have him walk her down the aisle on her wedding day—no matter who she was walking towards.

Her legs gave out underneath her and Samantha crumpled to the ground, howls of pain coming from the deepest recesses of her chest. She’d thought that she’d dealt with her father’s death. Thought that she did her mourning and that the pain would lessen as the days went by—hell, she was able to put on a brave face for her mom. But seeing her father’s grave and feeling it in her chest— _knowing_ —that this was it. That her father wasn’t ever coming back. That they weren’t going to be able to talk about the future and that there was never going to be a time where Billy got to see the grandkids for Christmas. It was a truly terrible feeling that hit her in her very core.

Her heart ached.

Three years ago, Samantha never would have guessed that leaving that train station, watching as her father disappeared with the train bound for Paris, would be the last time she’d ever see him. She cried then, but she was crying much harder now.

Samantha’s relationship with her father outweighed all of her friendships. Billy really and truly was Sam’s best friend. He always tried to plant sunflowers for her, even when the gloomy skies of London didn’t seem to provide much hope for them, and he always made time to hang out with her. Even if that meant putting down the papers that he was grading and picking up a plastic tea kettle to have pretend tea with her.

Her throat was raw, her eyes burned, and her hands grasped at the soft earth in front of her.

She must have been quite the sight. But she didn’t care. Samantha wanted one thing, one thing that she absolutely couldn’t have.

An arm came and rested across her shoulders, pulling her into a warm body that was clearly willing to give any sort of comfort necessary. Sam didn’t have to look to know that it was Ada, and she had no shame as she gripped onto Ada’s sweater and bawled her eyes out for what seemed like twenty minutes more.

When she finally felt as though she had no more tears in that moment, and when her chest was heaving, her nose bubbling, her lips trembling, she made her mind up. Why she was even thinking about what was growing inside of her when she wanted to be close to her father, she hadn’t a clue. But Samantha knew that her father would have supported her with whatever decision she’d make, and deep down in her heart, Samantha knew that it was the right one.

“Will you go with me?” she croaked, her voice not even sounding like her own.

“Go where?” Ada responded, rubbing a comforting hand up and down Samantha’s arm.

Sam looked up at Ada and sniffed, “Cardiff. I can’t…I can’t deal with whatever is going on inside of me right now. I don’t want to. And I don’t want to go alone.”

Ada didn’t even ask if Samantha was sure. Didn’t sigh or inhale or give any indication that she thought that what Samantha was doing was wrong. She just nodded, offering a small but sincere straight lipped smile. “Of course. Let’s get you out of the cold, okay?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Sorry for the kinda lame chapter. I'm sick. Not *that* kind of sick. But definitely not feeling well so it took a lot for me to want to write instead of watch Ink Master all day, not gonna lie. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you liked it! Love y'all. x


	11. Chapter 11

“Where were you yesterday?” He asked, spooning some of the soup that Polly had made into his bowl. His voice was smooth and calm, and he wasn’t even looking at Ada as he said it. It wasn’t like he really wanted to know or cared—he had all the info he needed anyway—but he wanted to see if Ada was going to tell him the truth. One of his many eyes around the city had seen Ada walking arm-in-arm with Samantha.

He was a little hurt, he’d admit, that the first Shelby she had chosen to interact with in nearly a month was not even a Shelby anymore, nor was she one that Samantha knew well. He supposed that it was progress and that he should be grateful that Sam was even speaking to any of them at all. But Tommy would be lying if he said that he wasn’t a little salty at the fact that he had told Sam that he loved her and she had effectively disappeared from his life.

Tommy rarely opened up to people, rarely showed them who he was at his core, and for him to do just that and have her say nothing at all? Well. That was recipe for the walls to come back up and the stone-cold attitude to return.

If Samantha wanted nothing to do with him anymore, the least she could do was tell him herself.

“What do you mean? I was at home.” Ada said pulling a spoonful of soup into her mouth. “All day with Karl.”

She avoided Tommy’s eyes as he sat down, choosing instead to focus on the chunks of chicken she was pushing around.

“That’s not what I heard.” Tommy was looking at her then, with the same stare he gave her when he was waiting for Ada to tell him who the father of her baby was. It was the kind of stare that gave people chills and made them start talking, even if they weren’t really sure what they were babbling about. It was like they needed to explain themselves—even if there wasn’t anything to explain in the first place.

Ada did have something to explain, though. That much was certain.

She continued to avoid Tommy’s stare, playing with her food and gnawing on her bottom lip. Basically, doing anything she could to avoid looking at her brother. For Ada, it must have felt like eons before she finally said something. She must have felt as though she was doing a really good job at keeping her mouth shut. But Tommy was Ada’s older brother, and he knew her well. He knew that eons in Ada time was no more than a few moments for him.

“Look, I promised her I wasn’t going to say anything. It was going to be her decision to come to you with the news when she was ready. But I went with her because she didn’t want to go alone. You can’t fault her for the decision, Tommy, I was in her same position when I thought Freddie had run away. Sam was just looking out for herself and the future life of that kid—she knew it wouldn’t be a good life. That this wasn’t a world she wanted to bring a little one into. She told me as much. So don’t you dare fault her for her decision or me for supporting her.” Ada huffed, slamming her spoon against the table.

Tommy’s mouth had gone dry. Did—did he hear his sister right? “Ada, what are you talking about? I was…I was referring to you two going to the cemetery together. What are _you_ talking about?”

Ada’s face went white then, and she looked like she was going to faint, “Tommy…I promised.”

“Well you kind of already fucked up that promise, Ada.”

“She’s pregnant,” she blurted. “Or was. Not anymore. She’s at home resting. I went with her to Cardiff.”

Tommy’s ears began ringing and he lost the ability to speak. He hadn’t be careful, that much was for certain. But he didn’t think that that was possible. Not that fast, anyway. And it wasn’t like he had had time to prepare himself for the information. The last thing on Tommy’s mind was that his sister was going to tell him that he was a father, for however short of a time it was. 

“Tommy?” Ada questioned softly, reaching out to lay a hand on her brother’s arm. “Tommy, are you okay?”

His voice, when he finally found it, was cracking and extremely weak, “Yes,” he croaked. “I’m fine.” He let his spoon clank against the bowl before standing up abruptly, “I need to go. I need to see her.”

“Tommy I promised her that I wouldn’t tell you—”

“Ada this isn’t about what you promised, alright? I’ll be back later.”

~*~

The walk to Sam’s house, though short, seemed as though it was taking years. He was sure that there were people talking to him as he passed by them, but he wasn’t hearing them. The ringing in his ears hadn’t stopped. He hadn’t stopped feeling dizzy, either. Tommy knew that he didn’t want a kid. He’d never in his life planned on having them—it just wasn’t something that he wanted for himself—but the fact that the woman he loved had been briefly carrying his child, had been carrying half of him, made him feel as though he did want that.

It wasn’t like he didn’t see a life with Samantha. She was everything Tommy had ever wanted in his life. She made him feel safe, as though there wasn’t any evil in the world. All he wanted was to be with her and pretend that he didn’t have a target on his back. What he wouldn’t give to live a normal life with her. As normal as he could, that is.

But with the enemies he had already made—hell, that Inspector was breathing down his neck again—and the enemies he was sure he was going to continue to make, it was certain that there wouldn’t be any sort of normalcy to his life.

So maybe Samantha did do the right thing in the long run, but Tommy definitely deserved to know.

By the time he had reached the entrance to her basement apartment, Tommy’s anger had come to a head. He wanted answers for everything. Not just the terminated pregnancy, but answers about why she had been hiding from him for a month. Had he been too in his own head to realize that she didn’t feel the same way about him? Had he just been misreading the entire situation?

It was possible. But if he was, Tommy just wanted answers. He wanted to know that he had been reading the situation wrong. At the very least it would provide him with a bit of closure.

His knocks on the door were harsh and unrelenting, getting more and more frequent the longer she went without answering the door. “Sam!” he shouted, the veins in his neck bulging in anger as he continued to pound against the door. “Samantha Rose Taylor, you open this damn door!”

He paused for a few moments, trying to listen in to her apartment, see if he could hear anything. Tommy was beginning to believe that she wasn’t home, that Ada had been lying about her whereabouts. Which made a twinge of panic skyrocket through Tommy’s gut—if Ada had lied about her being home, what if she had lied about everything? He knew that his sister had no reason to lie to him; hell, she thought that Tommy had somehow known about the pregnancy before she broke the news to him. So Ada wasn’t lying to him. Sam just wasn’t answering the door.

Thomas was about to start knocking again, start causing even more of a scene than he had been, when the door opened and revealed a very disheveled looking Sam. Her cheeks were red, her eyes insanely swollen and puffy. She looked like she hadn’t brushed her hair in weeks, when in reality she had been looking put together the day before. Tommy, though still angry, felt his heart crack at the sight. He’d seen her upset before—the very first time he had ever met her she was in tears—but not like this. “She told you, didn’t she?” Sam croaked, letting go of the door and stepping back into her apartment to allow Tommy to follow her inside.

“Not without some coaxing,” he reassured, shutting the door behind him. He could feel the anger throb in his veins. He wanted to shout and be mad, but she looked so wrecked that he couldn’t. Tommy had come with a list of things that he wanted to say to Sam but looking at her current state he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “I just…need to know where we stand.”

He watched as the dark-haired beauty blinked slowly, “That’s—that’s what you came here for? Not because you’re mad about the baby thing, but because you want to know where we—” she motioned between the two of them, “Stand?”

Thomas nodded, “You’ve not spoken to me in a month. Not since Kimber. Not since—” he swallowed thickly, “Not since I told you that I love you.”

Samantha wrapped her arms around herself, and Tommy could see the tears begin to bubble up in her eyes. “I know. It’s not been easy. But I was scared. I still am scared.”

“Scared of what?” he murmured, daring to take a step forward with his hands planted firmly in his pockets. “Of me?”

She shook her head, and when she spoke again, he could hear the tears in her voice, “No. Not of you. Of what you’re involved in. Because I love you. I love you so much it makes my heart ache. There has not been a day that goes by where I haven’t thought of you. Haven’t wanted to be curled up next to you. But I’m terrified. I don’t want to be used as a bargaining chip again. I wake up screaming and feeling like I still have Billy’s brain all over the side of my face. I can’t—I can’t do that again, Tommy. I won’t.”

Tommy swallowed, his heart leaping at the revelation. She loved him. The woman of his dreams actually loved him back. “I’m not asking you to. Sam, I’m scared too. When I realized he had you…my heart stopped. I don’t ever want to see that happen again and I promise you I will do everything in my power to ensure that it doesn’t. But I can’t—” was it getting hotter in there? Tommy’s hands suddenly felt clammy, especially as he got closer to Sam and gently took one of her arms from her, placing his hand in hers and squeezing tightly. “I can’t live without you.”

Sam’s lower lip quivered, her green eyes glinting in the low light of her apartment. “Then don’t,” she whispered before reaching up with her free hand to wrap around Tommy’s neck and pull him close, capturing his lips in a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all--if you didn't see my note before I deleted it, I did in fact have that kind of sick! I'm feeling better, but not fully myself, hence why this chapter is short and kinda crappy. HOWEVER it's a good build up for what I have planned next. This is the last chapter for 1919, and I'm really excited for the next set of chapters...I've got a lot planned! 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed, thank you for your patience!!
> 
> PS--been watching a *lot* of Star Wars content....how do we feel about an Anakin fic?


	12. Chapter 12

1921

At first, things were great. She and Tommy had sat down together and talked through the baby situation. Thomas admitted that he had been mad, not because of the decision she had made, but because he hadn’t known about the situation at all. She thought that that was maybe because that there was some part of him that had wanted that child, but as it turned out he just wanted to be there for her. He said he would have been there holding her hand instead of Ada if she’d just told him.

It felt like a fresh start, like they were hitting rewind on their budding love and trying to really be one with each other. To know each other in any way that they could. They talked about all of their fears, whether those fears involved each other or not. Sam finally told Tommy that the worst thing to happen to her during the war was losing so many people; she’d hinted at it, sure, but it was nearly impossible that the young nurse would find losing men on the operating table was more devastating than getting a chunk of her arm bitten off during an amputation. If nothing else, her saying that brought them closer together. Tommy recognized that Sam’s decision to stay away from him for a month was because she was scared—not just of the life that he led but of what it could potentially do to him. Sam had begun to care for him (care for him in a way she didn’t care for her patients during the war), and she had to admit to him that if something ever happened to him and she wasn’t able to save him, she’d never be able to live with herself.

Tommy had told her that he felt the same.

And so that’s how things went for the first year. The pair were open with their lines of communication, and they expressed their displeasure with anything that ever bothered them. The Shelby family welcomed Sam into their home with open arms, and though she was still excluded from family meetings—she was neither a married Shelby nor a blood Shelby—they respected her, and she respected them. Sam was there to help deliver John and Esme’s baby, though she knew next to nothing about delivering a baby (Mr. Owens was mainly a General Practitioner), and even when she made the transition to hospital work, she still didn’t deliver babies. Esme had nearly broken her hand squeezing so hard—Sam had made a point to request a different unit.

Not that the hospital had any problem placing her where she wanted to be. Her shining nursing record meant that Samantha was the perfect candidate for the trauma ward. She saw more gunshot victims than she dared count. When they first started coming in, their wounds would make her dizzy and she would have to hold the vomit back in her throat. It didn’t take much for her to remember having the muzzle of a gun resting against her skull. But over time Samantha learned that she had to push that aside. She had to take control of her life again, especially if she was going to be with Tommy. He tried to keep her as separate from his business ventures as possible, so Samantha had promised him that she would try to work through her trauma. Ironically, fishing out bullets and sewing up knife slashes helped quite a bit, though there were still nights she’d wake up drenched in sweat.

The Christmas of 1919 passed without a ring, as did the Christmas of 1920. Tommy had moved Sam out of the basement apartment that she had been renting from Mr. Owens—a man she still went in and worked for on the weekends when he needed help filling prescriptions—and into her own townhome closer to the hospital. He stayed there with her most nights, and Samantha didn’t dare ask where the money came from. She had very much adopted an out of sight, out of mind mentality about the sort of business that her boyfriend was involved in and she was thankful that her mother didn’t ask any questions, either.

When the Garrison blew up, all she wanted to know was if anyone was hurt.

But on a warm summer evening in 1921, Sam could no longer pretend that what Tommy was involved in was anything but illegal.

She was working late in the hospital, covering for a coworker who had not been feeling well, when the police carried a gurney into the trauma ward. Sam had nearly dropped the small vial of anesthetic that she’d been drawing from when she recognized—barely—the badly beaten and bleeding form of her boyfriend. His mouth was dribbling blood, his eyes swollen shut, and there was a large gash on his forehead. Every part of his face was covered in blood. From the way he was groaning, she had to assume that there were other ailments on his body. Ones she couldn’t see.

They’d decided to keep their relationship quiet from the people at Samantha’s work for fear of her being treated differently because of the nature of Tommy’s position within Small Heath, so the doctor on the floor that night had no issue with asking Sam to assist.

When they got morphine into Tommy and he was able to open his eyes slightly, a small smile—one that must have hurt him, for he winced as the corners of his mouth twitched up—appeared as he locked eyes with her. He wasn’t awake for much longer after that.

The next shift that Samantha had, which was two days after he’d been in, it was discovered that Tommy had jumped ship. No one in the hospital had seen him for nearly twenty-four hours. He’d been allowed to walk from the hospital with a broken arm and cracked ribs. To say that she was pissed would be an understatement.

She didn’t see him for nearly a week after that, and she had spent most of her time worrying about what was going on. Sam knew that Tommy had been trying to expand into London, therefore she had to assume that Tommy’s violent beating had something to do with that.

Sam preferred that Tommy kept her in the dark, she did, but it had haunted her, not knowing where he was.

When he’d finally shown up at the door, it was like he’d never been in the hospital in the first place. But that was also where the issues began.

Sam lay against Tommy’s chest, her middle finger delicately drawing shapes on his bare chest. The sheets were drawn close to her body, to cover her modesty, and she just listened to Tommy’s breathing as he went through some paperwork and puffed on a cigarette. It’d been weeks since he’d shown back up at the townhouse, and Sam was still willing herself to pay attention to his breathing. To see if there was anything they’d missed.

“So you went to see Polly’s son?” Sam asked, bringing attention back to the conversation they had had earlier in the day. Tommy had become so reserved after his time in the hospital, like he was hiding something, that getting him to talk to her about anything at all was like pulling teeth.

Tommy only grunted in acknowledgement, taking another drag off his cigarette.

The lack of response actually sent a twang of pain through Sam’s chest, and she had to bite down on the inside of her lip to keep it from trembling. Things hadn’t been absolutely perfect between them for the past two years, but it wasn’t like things were exactly bad, either. They moved together like a well-oiled machine, and Tommy still hadn’t married her. Hadn’t even acknowledged the subject when it was breached, by either Sam herself or his family. The sort of behavior he was exhibiting was beginning to make Samantha feel isolated and alone—like Thomas Shelby was beginning to lose interest in her. The fact that he couldn’t even say “yes” like a normal person was another point for that theory.

Sam sniffed to hide the fact that her eyes were welling up with tears, sitting up and throwing the blanket from her naked body, “I’m going to go and get ready for the party, okay?” She paused for a few moments, looking at Tommy with a sad smile on her face, “I love you.”

She got another grunt in response.

~*~

The party to celebrate the reopening of the Garrison was in full swing, with every inch of the newly reopened pub packed to the brim with people. Polly had been funneling drinks into Samantha’s hand, who was still sipping on the first one and passing all of the others along the bar. As soon as they had arrived, Tommy split from her and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Samantha standing alone. She felt incredibly out of place among the wild party goers, with some of them snorting cocaine off the bar top and others sticking their mouths underneath the beer tap.

That was something she’d realized over the past two years, too: no matter how much she loved Thomas, no matter how much she tried to look past who he was and what he did for a living, that didn’t excuse the fact that they were from completely different worlds. The scene that was unfolding before her in the newly reopened Garrison was not something Samantha had ever seen before. She’d spent her adolescent years in Belgium, sure, but at the ripe age of twenty-four Samantha still couldn’t get over the overall rowdiness of the world she found herself in.

As Polly left her side and began meandering around, Samantha backed up to the corner of the bar and dug out her cigarette case. She was fine merely observing, she decided.

The cigarette had just made it past her lips when someone tapped on her shoulder, and a familiar voice asked, “Is it alright if I join you?”

Sam’s whole mood changed as soon as she turned and saw Ada, and she threw her arms around the young woman in a tight embrace. It’d been months since she’d last seen Ada, and Sam was very grateful to have someone who understood what it was like to be on the outside of the Shelby’s doings. “Oh my goodness,” Sam said, squeezing her friend tight. “It’s so good to see you, Ada.”

Ada, after Thomas had come over to confront Sam about the baby incident, had come over to the basement apartment, too. She had been crying, clearly, and she expressed her apologies over and over again to the young nurse. Ada had felt extremely bad that she accidentally let slip to her brother that Sam had been pregnant, but Sam had put all of the young Shelby woman’s worries to the side and welcomed Ada as a great friend.

They never spoke of the incident.

Ada motioned for her brother Arthur, who was behind the bar, to make her a drink before settling against the bar top. “How have you been?! I haven’t seen you in ages.”

Samantha blew out the smoke from her cigarette and shrugged, “I’ve been alright. Same old, I suppose.”

“He still hasn’t done it, has he?”

In response, Sam held up her left hand and wiggled her bare ring finger, noting to herself that the gesture hurt more than she wanted it to. She gulped down the rest of her whiskey, slamming the empty glass onto the bar top and motioning for Arthur to make another one for her, “It’s getting worse, too.”

Samantha and Ada had been sending letters to each other, keeping one another up to date with what was going on in their lives. Ada had been settling into her new home nicely, even had herself a tenant living in one of the spare bedrooms. Samantha hadn’t been writing about anything happy. Tommy’s sister had been getting letters full of nothing but self-pity and wining, and Sam was truly embarrassed to admit that, even if Ada would never give her shit for it.

“Getting worse?”

Sam gnawed on her bottom lip, “Unfortunately. He’s—he’s barely acknowledging me now, Ada. I don’t know what I did, or what to do.” Samantha took a gulp of her new drink and raised her cigarette back to her mouth, trying to ignore that her hands were shaking. The idea that she could have given up everything she had in London for the cold shoulder treatment she was getting from Tommy was both infuriating and nerve-wracking. “I told him I loved him today, and you want to know what I got in response, Ada?” Sam cleared her throat and gave the best impression she could of the grunt Tommy had given her earlier. Doing so almost made her break into tears.

“That bastard.” Ada bit, throwing an arm around her and pulling her close. “You know what, if he’s treating you like that I think it’s time for you to move on, Sam. It’s been two years and my brother has shown you no sign of commitment. Now this? Fuck that. Fuck ‘im.”

Samantha blinked away the tears that were beginning to form in the corners of her eyes. Sam’s impulsiveness had gotten her into trouble in the past—the war, the abortion—but would what Ada was suggesting be considered impulsive? Over the past few weeks, she had felt further and further away from Tommy, from the man she was head over heels in love with. She had already had a hard time adjusting to all of the changes in her life, adjusting to a new town and a new job, a new home and a new way of living. She didn’t think she could adjust to living for and with a man who didn’t show her the same kind of love she was showing him.

The brunette didn’t say anything in response to Ada’s statements, merely slammed back the rest of the whiskey in her glass and put her cigarette back into her mouth, puffing away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh we're finally in 1921! Let me know what you guys think of this chapter! I hope it wasn't too messy--I tried my best to summarize the past two years as best as I could!


	13. Chapter 13

The bell atop the door rang, and Sam didn’t even glance over her shoulder as she spoke, “We’re closed for the night, apologies.”

It was one of the weekends she was helping out around Mr. Owen’s shop and she’d been filing paperwork away for the better part of an hour. They’d had a busy weekend, filled with people who didn’t feel well for one reason or another. They came to Mr. Owens when they didn’t have a lot of money, for Mr. Owens always tried to be fair and reasonable for those who couldn’t afford a lot. And in Small Heath, that was a good majority of the population. When Samantha had been working full time for him, he didn’t charge her rent because there hadn’t been any funds in the business to pay her. But now, even though Sam no longer lived in the basement residence of the Owens’ townhome, she was paying him rent. Paying him what she owed him, Sam would tell him.

Working on the weekends was also a way for her to give back to Mr. Owens how she could. He would come in for a few hours to see those who were in need of an actual doctor, but if they were able to get by with just a nurse’s visit, then Sam would be the one to attend to them.

“I was just hoping to ask for directions, if that’s alright with you.” The voice was soft and deep, and not entirely unlike her own. It didn’t carry the Small Heath twang that she had become so used to over the past few years.

Sam shut the cabinet she’d been working in and locked it shut, “I can’t promise I’ll be much help, but I can certainly try my best.” When she turned, where she’d expecting a man around her age, she found a younger man who looked as though he stuck out like a sore thumb. He reminded her a lot of herself, with his corduroy vest smartly buttoned up and accompanied by a red bowtie. “If I may, you look as though you’re quite a ways from where you’re from.”

The boy nodded, “I am. You sound as though you’re quite a ways from where you’re from, too.”

Samantha smiled, “I am. London. It’s been a few years yet, though, so I’m glad to hear I’ve not lost my accent.”

He returned the smile, “I’m from Sheffield myself. So hopefully we can manage our way around. I was hoping you could point me in the direction of the home of Elizabeth Gray?”

The brunette pursed her lips, gnawing slightly on the inside of her lip as she began to wrack her brain for everyone she’d met in the past few years. That was not a name that she recognized at all. Not even in passing. “I’m sorry, I don’t. I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”

He nodded, sticking his hands in his pockets and turning on his heel as though he was going to make for the door and exit, “I’m Michael, by the way. Michael Gray.”

“Samantha Taylor.” She tapped the file cabinet key against the desk, “Shall I assume you’re looking for a relative of yours, then?”

“Something like that.” He muttered, reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck. “She’s supposed to be my mother, but…we’ll see about that.”

Sensing that whatever it was that he was dealing with was extremely personal, Sam chose not to speak about the “supposed” bit, instead choosing to offer as much of a comforting smile as she could muster. “Well, I hope that you find what you’re looking for, Michael. Good luck.”

~*~

She didn’t know why she’d been expecting him there when she finally lugged herself in the townhome and shut the door behind her, but then again, she knew that up until their weird problems began, he _always_ was. Thomas Shelby, the big and bad Small Heath gangster, was often in the kitchen cooking dinner for the two of them. Sam would come home smelling of sterilization and would be greeted by the warm and comforting smells of fresh cooking bread or some kind of stew (he’d never admit it, but Tommy was a good cook). And Tommy would come waltzing out of the kitchen with a towel slung over his shoulder and a big, cheesy grin on his face. Like he was looking at her as if she’d put all the stars in the sky for him.

Sam honestly couldn’t remember the last time Tommy had looked at her like that. These days, his eyes were clouded with something other than love, and she could never quite put her finger on it as to what it was.

If his goal was to alienate her, it was surely working.

Samantha sighed heavily as she made her way to the kitchen and plopped herself on one of the chairs at the small breakfast table situated in the corner, pulling a leg up and across the other one to unbuckle her heels from her aching feet. She was absolutely exhausted—going on six straight days of being on her feet for at least ten hours—so much so that she didn’t even want to make dinner. Sleep sounded just as good as food. But as she rubbed at the aching soles of her feet, her stomach grumbled loudly, telling her that she didn’t have a choice. She needed to eat something, or she’d be up all night listening to the complaints of her digestive system.

Not in the mood to make anything else, Samantha tugged a pack of sausage and some eggs out of her fridge, deciding that it was something at the very least and was probably all that she could muster. As she began cooking, listening to the overwhelming quiet of the townhome she’d once been so excited to live in with who she considered to be the love of her life, an intense wave of sadness washed over her. The stress and the grief seemed to be sitting hard against her chest, and after exasperatingly flipping over one of the sausages, she raised her hands to cup her mouth and nose as she began to cry. Samantha had finally begun to feel as though things were going right in her life. She had thought that she no longer had to struggle to wedge herself in with the world around her; coming back from war, she felt as though she had missed out on so much. So many of her school friends had gotten married and started to have children, and while a good number of them had husbands who went off to war, none of the girls dealt with what Sam dealt with. None of them knew what it was like to never shake the coppery smell of blood from their noses or get the metallic taste of it out of their mouths after a small splash made it onto the corner of their lips. The girls she had once considered her closest friends had felt worlds away from who she was when she came back from war.

Small Heath had felt like a fresh start. She had a new job that she had been excited about. She had a goal in mind, a career. She had someone she was so deeply in love with that the world seemed to stop spinning whenever he was in the room. And things had been going so, _so_ well.

Sure, Samantha felt out of place at the hospital. She was the youngest nurse on staff and the one with the least experience, but it was clear that the doctors placed an enormous amount of trust in her. Even though that trust didn’t win her any favors with the other, tenured nurses, Samantha didn’t care. She hadn’t gone to the hospital to make friends. She’d gone to do what she loved and to help people.

But as she stood there, listening to the crackling of the sausage in the pan and her own sounds of sadness, Samantha realized that all she wanted was a friend in the world. One who wasn’t miles away like Ada was, one who didn’t have to hide things for the sake of her comfortability like Tommy did, one who didn’t envy her for the attention and trust she received from the doctors at the hospital. Samantha was now, once again, isolated. Feeling as though she’d never fit in.

The brunette sniffed up her tears and wiped at her eyes furiously before dumping the eggs and the burnt sausage onto a plate and grabbing a fork.

As she sat at the small breakfast table, with her feet tucked up underneath of her and her eyes red and swollen from crying, Samantha pushed her food around the plate and realized she wasn’t hungry anymore.

~*~

When she arrived at the clinic the next morning to open, Samantha felt as though she’d been hit by a train. She stayed up late, pitying herself and drinking way too much whiskey for her own good, and she was certainly paying for it. The thumping in her head was only exasperated by the bell atop the door ringing as she unlocked the door and swung it open, and the brunette visibly grimaced at the noise. “We’ve got to do something about that,” she murmured to herself, stuffing the shop keys back into her handbag and stumbling to the reception desk. She didn’t even bother opening up the appointment book that was sitting atop it before slouching down into the chair and resting her head against the table, feeling as though her skull was about to shatter with as much pressure was present.

She was perfectly content to remain like that for the entirety of the day, and even felt herself beginning to nod off slightly, when that damned bell went off again and Samantha’s whole body visibly curled up in disgust at the noise. “Bloody—” she raised her head, squinting against the sunlight that was beginning to come in through the slits in the blinds.

“Oh, apologies. Have I once again caught you at a time where you’re not open?”

As the sun began to melt behind the figure and she was able to see more clearly, a small smile spread across Sam’s face. “Michael. No. Not at all. We’re open, I’m just lagging today, is all.”

The young man returned the smile and put his hands into his pockets, taking a step in Sam’s general direction. “I’ve come to ask if you’d like to join me for a meal sometime today. Perhaps on your lunch hour?”

Sam was standing now, though wobbly and leaning slightly against the reception desk. She wanted nothing more than to not have any sort of conversation at all for fear of hurling her guts up over the desk and having to clean it all up, but she knew that Michael was just trying to have polite conversation. “A meal? How old are you? You look awfully young to be hanging around the likes of me,” the brunette quipped, trying to make a lighthearted laugh but ended up wincing terribly at the pressure building up in her head at the gesture.

“Nineteen. So young, yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to date you, Miss Taylor. I’ve just asked you out for a meal, is all. Besides, I’ll be twenty in a week’s time if that makes you feel better about it.”

She almost said no immediately, said that she had a boyfriend who wouldn’t like that very much at all and would probably cause trouble for the both of them. But then Ada’s words from the party at the reopening of the Garrison rang in the back of her head. Tommy wasn’t putting effort into their relationship anymore; he wasn’t putting effort into her anymore. So why should it matter what he thinks? Besides, Michael was several years younger than her and he made a point of saying that he just wanted to grab a bite. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that. Was there a possibility that she was going to actually have a friend in Small Heath?

Sure, she had no idea how long Michael was planning on staying or if he had even found what he’d been looking for, but the thought of having someone to talk to who wasn’t a boss or a family member of her boyfriend actually made her excited. “Sure. I’ll be on lunch at noon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I KNOW IT'S SUPER SHORT IM SORRY IM TRYING TO KEEP THINGS MOVING. 
> 
> Also hi! Sorry it's been a while. Work is getting super busy again (I work a full time job during the week), so I've been struggling to find time to write! Also also, I changed Michael's age in the story to be a few years older because 1) i'm pretty sure there was an inconsistency in the show about his age *anyway*, and 2) i don't know I just feel really weird including minors in a story about gangs. Like that just doesn't feel right to me. So yeah he's a *bit* older. 
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this short chapter! Let me know what you think (: 
> 
> PS, if you're a fan of Star Wars, I do have a Star Wars fic out if you want to check it out!


	14. Chapter 14

think im gonna take a break on this one. I know that as a writer you’ll never please anyone (I’ve been published twice, trust me, I know) but if you don’t wanna read it, don’t. i’m not catering to your preconceived notions of who you want my character to be. end of. I’m a law student, and I have a full time career. I’ve got way more important things to do than to produce content that I enjoy creating only to get comments that, truly, do bother me. Because you didn’t have to leave those comments in the first place. Hatefulness is not criticism my friends.

Mini rant over. Taking a solid break to recoup and hopefully come back stronger. Many thanks to everyone who has shown great love and support for this story and for Sam. <3


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